


Fruit of the Vine

by morphineinatin



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Misunderstandings, Retelling, Sobriety, Unplanned Pregnancy, idea taken from Patrick Page and his own Hadestown headcanon, lots of internal conflict on both ends, they just love each other so much and they’re going to get better I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23732650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphineinatin/pseuds/morphineinatin
Summary: Hadestown - with an added difficulty.
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown), Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 198





	1. Livin’ it Up on Top

**Author's Note:**

> So, us fic writers have been blessed with some new inspiration. I’ve been thinking about Patrick’s old interpretation of Hadestown with Amber since I heard it and I thought I’d give this a shot

“You ain’t drinkin’, sister.”

Persephone glanced upwards from the bare surface of the table she’d chosen to sit herself at. Things weren’t as hectic as they were when she came up, she’d been on the surface a few days, maybe a week, over one month by now, so she had the free space, but still; it was very unlike her not to want to be front and centre where she could grab at whatever she wanted with ease, and if anybody knew that, it was the god stood before her. She didn’t look at him long before waving a hand dismissively - something she didn’t realise she’d picked up from her husband along the lengthy road of marriage somewhere - and directing her attention back to the table’s wooden surface uncluttered by countless empty glasses, or bottles on a bad day. Which was most of them. 

“Had myself enough at mama’s.”

Bold faced lie, that, hadn’t been a time in centuries when she’d been able to down enough of whatever into her system, it didn’t take a genius to know. Hermes raised an eyebrow at her, and she could tell the exact look he was giving her without needing to see it. No point in keeping up the lie, no, but she never had liked admitting to his victory in anything. 

“Since when you started having enough?”

Persephone’s dark eyes shot up, glaring at her half-sibling in a way that told him it wasn’t the time for this, better back down while you still can. He did just that, raising his hands in surrender before turning away to tend to someone on the other side of the room. It was late, thankfully, there weren’t many guests and the one table they occupied didn’t appear to be paying her too much mind. She didn’t like mortals seeing her unfavourable sides. They saw a very specific Persephone. They saw her happy-drunk - or high, depends on what substance she favoured more in that moment, but alcohol was always easier - dancing and laughing and really livin’ it up like all the problems on top weren’t half her doing. If - no, when - her husband came early, they got a glimpse of angry-drunk Persephone. The beginnings of what would turn into screaming matches, snarls and glared directed at her husband as he took her by the hand onto that train. From then on, they had nothing but storms to judge her emotions on. Now, this? This feeling was unidentifiable. She was sober; bad start already. She was stressed, to put it lightly, but she was good at keeping her face fixed at just annoyed. This was new, this brand of nervousness, if indeed that was what it was, and she wasn’t too partial to it. This was a new situation, as well, and it wasn’t one she could drink away. Well, it was, but... not yet. Not unless it really went south, then she could think about that possibility. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to. But still, it was there. 

When she first came back for spring, something didn’t feel right. Not wrong, per day, but not right. Not normal. Her energy was high, she had a good time with the mortals, including Orpheus and his fiery new girl who was as small and feisty as they come, and danced the night away to celebrate her return, but she couldn’t bring herself to finish off more than half a bottle of her favourite wine. Her stomach twisted at the thought, opting to pass it around and fill and refill the cups of her people. Orpheus made a toast in her honour and her drink burned more than what she expected. A couple days later when nothing improved, Persephone found herself lying wide awake wracking her painfully sober mind to try and think of any excuse for this that wasn’t what she knew was undoubtedly the case. Despite how unkind she could be to it, she was greatly in tune with her own body. Nothing had outwardly presented itself yet, but she didn’t need it to. This was an easy thing to identify for a goddess of her abilities.

She stayed staring at that table for what could have been all six months she was allotted for all she cared, off in her own world somewhere between realms above and below trying to fathom how on her mother’s burning earth to deal with this. She had to tell him. Even if it wasn’t definite yet, he deserved to know. It was about the only thing he still deserved from her after all he’d put her through. All of that, and now this? She couldn’t catch a break if it landed itself nice and pretty in her arms.

When the bar door swung closed, Persephone straightened her back and glanced around, over her lacy green sleeves to see if she was alone. Even Hermes’ muse boy was gone. He hadn’t been around as much, now that he had his little soon-to-be wife at his side to keep him occupied rather than opting to hang around an empty bar with his kind-of-aunt Persephone drinking herself to - were she a mere mortal like him - a certain death. 

Helping Hermes out in raising that kid was the closest she’d gotten to being a parent previously. He’d been handed over unexpectedly at a painfully young age, and Persephone wouldn’t be her mother’s daughter if something in her hadn’t been inclined to comfort the poor thing when he eventually did grasp what was going on. He was a man now, technically, but Orpheus never had grown out of his boyish ways. The way he saw things, the way he spoke about the world, made Persephone want to believe it all too. But she’d lived in the world, the real world, far longer than he so far had and would go on to outlive him when his time did come to take his place in the mines with the rest of the shades down below. She’d lived in two worlds, even, the double lives she lead could not possibly be more different than one another. Nature and industrialism, daughter and wife, secondary goddess and powerful queen. She knew what it was like, in a world unguarded by song and surrounded by walls. She’d been like Orpheus once too, but love doesn’t blind you forever, brother. Eventually, you learn. 

One hand withdrew from the table and fell to her lap, fingers brushing against her stomach in as inconspicuous a way she could manage. She’d expected this would happen eventually. They never planned it, no, but neither she nor her husband were opposed to having children. It would be helpful to have an heir, it might ease the ache of their arrangement in the long run. But this wasn’t how she wanted it. This wasn’t when she wanted it, either, not when the couple could hardly stand to be in the same room as one another without starting some kind of quarrel. But here it was. Not much that could be done now. 

Once she was sure she was alone - with the exception of Hermes, who was necessary here, she made her mind up on what to do. This, at least, would hopefully dodge one particular verbal argument. It would open the flood gates to a brand new one, of course, but there wasn’t much between them anymore that didn’t end in some sort of fight. Alternatively, he might use this as an excuse to come snatch his wife away from the mortals earlier than ever before. If he did drag her down, she’d go kicking and screaming like some of the twisted stories of a forced marriage depicted their first meeting. She loved him still, under all of the resentment, but she’d be damned if she let him get her a whole month early. 

Hermes turned his head prompted by a snap of her fingers, not bothering to complain as he’d come used to his sister’s less-than-polite methods of grabbing his attention, especially when she was actually sober. 

“You ready to order?”

Persephone rolled her eyes and stood from her seat, lifting her flower filled back and placing it on the chair. 

“Ain’t drinkin’ tonight, brother,” she admitted, ignoring unruly curls falling over her shoulders. “You got somethin’ I can write with?”

Hermes gave her a quizzical look, she tried to keep hers stern and unwavering. She didn’t want him to catch wind of her nerves, though she was sure he could sense they were there. 

“Message to the man downstairs?” Hermes asked, stepping behind the bar and pulling out a pencil and small notepad that Orpheus sometimes used to pen down orders when the place was particularly full. His sister stayed quiet, though in her usual ways she would’ve growled out something like “of course I am, who the hell else ya see me writin’ to?”, swiping the stationary from his hand and starting out simple. 

‘Husband.’

Great opening line, she thought to herself, damn wordsmith you are. 

“What’s he done this time?” the fellow god asked, to which Persephone shook her head without looking up. 

“It ain’t like that,” she muttered, writing something that she scored out before tearing the page away and starting anew. This was a delicate matter. One wrong word and she’d set that man off. 

“Ain’t like you to pay him a compliment,” Hermes remarked with a chuckle as Persephone ripped away a second page. Again, she shook her head, still not looking up from her writing. 

“Ain’t that either.”

No point in trying to make this wordy. She settled for two sentences, blunt and to-the-point and nothing her stubborn bull of a husband could misread as something different despite how talented he was at doing so. She stared at it a moment, a little taken aback by her own words. This was real, huh? She signed her letter and tore the paper off again, folding it in half as he handed it to her messenger brother. 

“Take this down to him soon as ya can, and don’t you dare go readin’ it,” she told him, pushing it into his hands. “It’s important, ain’t just talkin’ his ear off this time around.”

Hermes presented an expression that read “you always say it’s important”. She responded with one that told him “I really mean it this time, brother, don’t you try me”. Were she as stupidly drunk as she tended to get, his slight doubt would be a little more justified, but this was sober Persephone. Years had worn her down, years of marriage and politics and endless arguing had taken away all the fun from most elements of existence for her were there not a bottle in hand to join her for the ride. Sober Persephone was never in a right mind to joke like this. 

“Aight,” Hermes agreed with a shrug, tucking the note into the pocket of his silver blazer. “I’ll take it to him come mornin’, sister, but I ain’t mediating one’a your fights again.”

That was good enough. Persephone turned on her heels, grabbing her wicker bag firmly by the handle and trying her best to ignore than metal shine of a tragically empty hip flask inside it. A drink or two or three at this point wouldn’t hurt, really it wouldn’t, but common sense she tended to ignore when it came to alcohol warned her that she’d be far better off weeding herself off of her reliances before it was too late. But fates, it was hurting already. 

“Headin’ out?”

“Mhm.”

“Can I at least know what I’m deliverin’ to your man?”

“No. Ain’t your problem, brother.”

She slung her bag over her elbow, giving Hermes a wave as she left the comfortable warmth of the bar into the far less bearable humidity of a summer evening. He’d know soon enough, her mama would sooner - that was a conversation she was not looking forward to. Her mother couldn’t stand the king even after so many centuries, much less the idea that her daughter had, gods forbid, slept with her own husband. This wouldn’t be pretty. She sighed, closing the door behind her and glancing down at her still slim body before starting the trek back to her mama’s house. She better enjoy her form while she still could, she wouldn’t stay this way for much longer if her suspicions were correct. As a fertility goddess, she was far more in tune with this kind of thing than other goddesses or mortal women ever would be. Really, it was a miracle this didn’t happen sooner, but damn if it wouldn’t have been better when things weren’t so rocky between the king and queen of down below. 

Hermes glanced out of a small bar window, watching his sister’s silhouette until she vanished over the horizon. Making sure he was good and safe before letting himself take a look at what she had made very clear he was not allowed to. He’d always been quite the gossip, had Hermes, taking after the branch of family Persephone was never involved with. He wouldn’t share word around, no, he was smarter than that, he knew how scary his sister could get. Didn’t get renamed The Bringer of Death for no reason. But still. Curiosity is a powerful thing. 

He slipped the folded paper from his pocket, unsure of what to expect as his eyes danced across the admittedly minimal use of words. Even then, he could not have predicted what he saw. 

“Husband,

I suspect that I am pregnant. Do not come for me early, I will update you when I am sure.

Yours, Persephone.”


	2. Way Down Hadestown

Three months. That’s what he gave her. Less than. Not even three months before that train came barrelling up the tracks. 

Persephone was back in the bar when Hermes informed her of her husband’s early arrival, seated with a beaming Orpheus and an equally as excited Eurydice as her hand nursed a glass of water. If she pretended hard enough, she could convince herself that it was just a particularly weak draught of vodka. Her pregnancy was not yet public knowledge, she didn’t want any of the inevitable fuss that would come with it nor did she want some backseat marriage counselling from a mortal who barely ever even saw her husband, let alone knew what it was like to live with him. She suspected Hermes had read her letter against her will, either that or her man’s reaction to the news told him enough to work it out for himself. Orpheus did know too, she trusted that boy and he seemed concerned after a week or so of watching her scowling and silent in the corner of the room without so much as a single drink in her grasp. He might have told Eurydice, who was currently sitting like a little queen on his lap, he might not have, but neither brought it up, which she appreciated greatly. As bad of an idea as she knew it was, Persephone’s method so far had mostly consisted of opting to ignore the whole ordeal. It wouldn’t solve a single thing, no sir, but it was the easy way. She had to face storms head on every other time in her life, she had earned the right to a little calmness. Not like it lasted. It never did. Not with the life she was leading. The roads she travelled in her life were never easy.

Hermes didn’t need speak a word to his sister for her to catch on to exactly what was going down. She had been mid conversation with both mortals at the time - the new couple were so in rhythm with one another that they often finished off one another’s sentences - and she was enjoying herself. Well, as much as she could, given the circumstances. They were good company, that pair. Orpheus had always been a nice presence to have around, and, given her frequent visits to the bar, even since she’d tried to cut down her alcohol, he was usually nearby to have a nice talk with. A passionate boy, he was. His two most recent passions were his girl - who Persephone heard he proposed to within the second sentence he spoke to her - and his song. His song that was gonna change the world, apparently, but Persephone was still yet to hear it. Eurydice seemed just as excited as her lover about this musical miracle, her eyes shining bright as stars whilst she told the goddess of all they were sure it was going to do. It made Persephone happy, seeing how truly in love these two were, but it was a bittersweet feeling. The reminded her of how things used to be with her and her man, when things weren’t so complicated and distrustful and bitter between them both. Why couldn’t this have happened then? Why now, of all times, did something have to take hold? 

The reality of everything was hard to ignore when she had nothing to distract her. No drinks, no drugs, no nothing except her, mama, Hermes and the baby nobody would guess she had at a glance. Changes to her attire were more tactical than they were fashionable when something had begun to show. There had been nights she lay awake in her small bedroom back at her mother’s house, her some for half of every year, hands gently rested to her stomach as she bit back worried, sober tears. 

What was going to happen once the baby was born? The custody arrangement made centuries ago never considered the possibility of children. Everyone expected the two of them to give up a decade or two along the way, forgetting how the king and queen were the two most stubborn gods any realm had to offer. If she took a child away from Hades along with her every six months, things would indefinitely get worse. He never really had come to terms with the fact that she was leaving because she had to, not because she wanted to - not when they first married. Now, she couldn’t say which it was, but it was always an obligation wether she liked it or not. It was that absence of his wife in their kingdom for half a year that drove him to where he was now, what in every god’s name would happen once there was a baby in the picture? And if she left it with him - what did he know about parenting? Sure, Persephone admittedly lacked the most mothering of natures, but she had Demeter - a mother bear if there ever was one - for reference. Instincts for her would probably kick in once the baby was born anyway. But Hades? Now that’s a different story. That man, to put it lightly, had a rough family life if there ever was one. As bad as she felt for admitting it, she didn’t trust Hades alone with a baby. He worked so much and so hard, he always had something to be done. A child just didn’t fit in with his schedule. His kingdom wasn’t build with a baby in mind, either, that place was a death trap for the unprotected. This would start a fight. She could feel it coming like a storm gathering over her head. She buried herself under the blankets of her bed like a kid, hoping that maybe it could shield her from this inevitable disaster. 

“I’m sorry, baby...” she whispered in the silent darkness of her bedroom to what was starting to bloom within her. She didn’t know what specifically she was apologising for. Everything, really, it was. For everything she knew this child would have to deal with. No matter what, she would love this baby, that she knew for certain as untimely and unplanned their arrival would be, but love didn’t protect you from everything. Persephone had learned that the hard way. 

With Orpheus and Eurydice, she had been nicely distracted from the danger approaching, blissfully unaware of the trip her husband had decided to make. Of course, until Hermes showed up. Orpheus beamed even brighter, if that was actually possible at that point, waving to his father figure when he entered, but the god shook his head. Now was time to brace for impact, there was no way Persephone would react in any way positively to this. She never did. Not since things started heading south.

He tapped Persephone’s shoulder and she turned her head, opening her mouth to greet her brother before reading the expression that had taken ahold of his face. She knew that look, knew it painfully well. She saw it every year. He didn’t need to say a thing for her to catch on. 

“He isn’t-“

“He is.”

The mortal couple watched on worriedly as Persephone’s grip on her glass tightened. She turned from Hermes, teeth grit and free hand balled into a fist before she slammed the glass down against the table, pushing herself up from her seat. 

“Come on!”

She flung her head back, a mass of her wild curls falling against her back from over her shoulders. 

“Ma’am, are you-“ Orpheus began, but Persephone was snarling again before he got the chance to finish. 

“That was not six months! I hardly even been here for three and his selfish ass decides it’s time? Who in the name’a Tartarus he think he is?”

“Sister.” Hermes spoke firmly, grabbing her arm as mortals watched on in fear. Not only was a rage-filled Persephone a scary sight to bear witness to, her departure meant harsh winters were on their way along with her husband. Winters that were so merciless and unforgiving that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to say half of them wouldn’t make it out alive. The goddess knew she was making a scene, but right now, that was the last of her worries. “Ain’t got time for this.”

Persephone closed her eyes and swallowed hard. He was right but, again, she wouldn’t give him that credit. She turned, ignoring the faces of the mortal guests around her as she stormed out of the building. The door swung open and slammed loudly closed behind her as the goddess stomped her way to her mama’s house, outdoor boots crushing lush green grass beneath her heels that would soon wither without her presence. Selfish, selfish man. He didn’t say he’d wait anymore, she’d ordered him to quit playing at that because it was a promise he always broke without fail. But this? This was the earliest he’d been in a while, perhaps the earliest ever, and she was not looking forward to whatever would come of her wildfire of emotions on the trip down. 

The door entering her mother’s cottage was flung open and slammed shut with just as much intensity as the bar’s was beforehand, and Persephone took herself straight to her bedroom. She didn’t know if her mama was in the house or if she was tending their vast expanse of gardens, but she didn’t care right now. She threw the side of her body onto her bed, - one of the only things she still had that wasn’t in some way her husband - buried her face in her pillow and screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat demanded for her to stop effective immediately. Normally, this was an issue she could drown with alcohol. But sobriety wasn’t easy. Withdrawal headaches were a pain, and against the stress of her situation and the growing side affects of pregnancy, it was a nightmare to deal with.

“Kore?”

She was unaware of her mother entering the room until she was already scooped up into her arms, her smaller body cradled carefully against Demeter’s chest. She didn’t speak, didn’t breath a word, not even about the name. She had given up on correcting that because it was a fruitless attempt, as useless as telling her husband to wait his turn for once. Strange, truly strange, how much her mama still babied her despite her being mere months away from becoming a mother herself. 

“Kore, baby, what’s wrong?” Demeter asked with motherly concern, gently brushing tears away that Persephone did not once recall shedding. Pregnancy hormones, she’d dismiss it as. 

“The hell do you think is wrong?” the daughter responded and pulled herself away from the embrace, something she quickly regretted doing with the loss of that sturdy comfort. “Husband’s on his way up to get me.”

Demeter’s face fell. She stood from the bed, one hand at her forehead as she managed to stay composed far more skilfully than her daughter. She sighed in exasperated frustration, Persephone trying to ignore the pain growing in her head. 

“Impatient ol’ bastard...” she caught her mama curse under her breath, taking a deep breath before turning her head back to face her daughter. “Let’s get ya packed ‘fore he shows his face on my turf. Lotta things you’ll need down there, the way you’ll be, no mama to lend a hand.”

-

The initial conversation with Demeter had not been an easy one, no, but it hadn’t been what she expected. Main reason being that she hadn’t actually told her mother. Rather, her mother told her. Kind of.

“Kore,” she’d asked her late one evening, a few days following the deliverance of her quickly scrawled letter to the man downstairs. “There somethin’ you want to talk to me about?”

Persephone glanced up from what she was doing - which was absolutely nothing - and her eyes met those of her mother from across their small living room, who was sat comfortably in an armchair. That was a phrase she hadn’t heard in a while, not since she was a young girl who’d sneak off in a way she thought was as inconspicuous as could be. In reality, her mama could always predict her every move. Even now, when she hadn’t done anything wrong, per say, those words still held the uncanny ability to make her tense up on the spot. 

“Why you askin’?” Persephone replied in a way she tried to make sound as casual and as I’m-not-freaking-out as she could. Apparently, she was a better actress when drunk, because Demeter gave her an eyebrow raise that she knew from many childhood experiences indicated she better give the act up. 

“Queen or not, I’m still your mama,” the older goddess continued. “I can tell when there’s somethin’ on your mind. Enough to weed ya off the drink, it seems.”

Persephone sighed and shook her head, deciding that now was the perfect time to study their worn wooden floorboards. “Ain’t important.” Fates, could she get more cliched in that moment if she tried?

“Don’t you pull that with me, girl.” Demeter stated firmly, remind Persephone while she always cane out on top in their familial disputes. She softened up again upon catching the unease in her daughter’s eyes, unease she didn’t know how to mask. “You got more on your mind than usual, darlin’, mama just wants to help ya. I ain’t gonna be mad at you, promise.”

Persephone bit the inside of her cheek, fiddling with some of the lace on her skirt. No way out of this one, was there? Not that she could see. 

Silence hung over the pair for a moment or two, mother awaiting a reply and daughter struggling to find her voice again. When Persephone was rendered silent, that’s a sign something was up. 

“I-“ the younger - but still old - goddess began, cutting her words off abruptly and shaking her head. Demeter said nothing. Her daughter needed time to get this out, that was crystal clear, and she had acquired herself some incredible patience along with her long and lonesome winter waits. Persephone gathered herself, raising her head with a deep breath. “I’m expectin’.”

It took a few seconds for Demeter to process those words, and for Persephone to realise what she’d done. Saying it out loud solidified it, made it a truth cold and hard as stones of the wall surrounding her husband’s realm. Her mother blinked, gesturing to Persephone’s stomach still yet to show signs of anything only a month or so along. 

“You’re..?”

Persephone nodded. 

“Hades?”

At the question with so obvious an answer, her daughter let out a breathy chuckle, trying to remove tension here wherever she could. 

“First time I hear ya say my husband’s name, mama, and it’s with that question?” she remarked, not quite managing a smile. “It’s his, as his as it gets. I ain’t like the rest of our family, you know that.”

Demeter sat back in her armchair, giving her girl another quick up and down glance. “This... was this planned, or..?”

“‘Bout as planned as our weddin’ was.”

That was Persephone’s way of saying not at all. It was true, their wedding commenced mere minutes after they first met one another, Hades on bended knees, pleading for her to take pity on his heart. Wedding bands made from metals of his realm and a wedding bed of the grass and flowers of her own. Unplanned, unprompted, but it was easier then. She was young and unafraid, grabbing what she wanted when she wanted it and caring not for the consequences. This? This was an entirely different story now. 

“You told him yet?” Full of questions tonight, was her mother. 

“Gave Hermes a letter explainin’ things a few days back. Kept it short and sweet, real to-the-point the way he likes things.”

Another period of silence befell the room. Persephone’s slender fingers went back to toying with the lace of her long skirt. She wouldn’t be able to wear any of these dresses for too much longer, would she?

“Darlin’, you...” Demeter eventually spoke up again, rubbing at her temple. “You sure now’s a good time? Your marriage bein’... the way that it is.”

“I’m havin’ this kid, mama.” Persephone stated with all the assurance and certainty she lacked. She didn’t want to get rid of this baby. Hard as times were, as inconvenient as the timing was, she didn’t want to do that. Still, the option she was left with - having the child - wasn’t ideal either. “Nobody can stop that.”

“I know, baby, I know, ain’t tryin’ to stop you. I just don’t wanna see you hurtin’ the way some’a the others of our kind do. Hell, the way I did when your daddy-.”

“Hades ain’t gonna leave me over this!” Persephone barked as she suddenly stood from her chair. She didn’t have much faith left in her husband, that was for sure, but the one thing about him she knew never changed, never wavered, was his loyalty. Not once since they married had he so much as glanced at any woman besides her for anything beyond a second. He loved her, she loved him too, they just weren’t very good at translating that love into actions, far less into words. “My man’s a damn right pain but he ain’t like anyone up on that mountain, don’t you dare put him on that level!”

“Kore, I’m just-“

“I don’t care! He’s my husband and this is my baby, I’ll be damned if I let you control them the way ya did me!”

Before Demeter could even utter another word, Persephone had stormed off into her bedroom. She would’ve locked the door if it actually had one. 

She lay awake most of that night. Mama don’t know Hades, she tried to remind herself. Mama don’t know what she’s talking about. But then there was that voice in the back of her mind, that storm of a song that won’t go away sung in it’s haunting three-part harmony that leant itself beautifully to torment. 

“He hasn’t left you yet,” they told her. “He hasn’t left you yet but what will happen now? He’s just like his brothers.”

The more Persephone tried to block them out, the louder and longer the voices sang. 

“Why would he still want you?” taunted one. 

“A wife for half of the year who won’t even met him touch her, what use are you anymore?” added another.

“He’ll find someone new, a young little thing who won’t leave him, and then what will you be?” the third chimed in. “Useless goddess with an unwanted baby.”

Persephone curled herself up as small as she could, shielding herself underneath her blankets and trying not to listen to the words ringing throughout her brain. It wasn’t often that she ended up like this. Her husband, sure, they always aided him in his doubts that pushed him to the surface, but she had usually been good at ignoring it all. She only came to understand just how bad her reliances on her favoured substances were when they were torn away from her. A good strong drink could put a stop to all of this. 

-

Now, she was sat on the edge of that bed with tension in her body watching her mama, sitting on the floor in front of her, talk her through everything she would need whilst packing them into her suitcase. As much dislike Demeter held for her husband, she would make sure that her daughter had all that she needed to comfortably bear his child, even on such short notice. She had handmade her girl some new dresses, looser fabric preparing for a few months down the line. What she lacked the time to sew, she replaced with some of her own old attire from when she had been in Persephone’s position. They’d had a conversation about what changes expect before, the day after Persephone’s initial admission to the pregnancy, but Demeter was going over the grounds in far more detail. She had expected to be able to help her daughter through the majority of this, wrongly thinking the best of the king for the first time in her long, long life, and Demeter’s already overprotective instincts were accelerated as she made sure over and over again that Persephone was listening. She was, she tried to look as engaged as she could, but it was a tough challenge, given that there was just... so much to think about. So much to prepare for and so little time to do so. 

Demeter was interrupted by a knock at the door as she was folding one of the last gowns, something Persephone was never very good at. She sighed, lowering her head and standing to answer their visitor. 

“That’ll be your brother comin’ for ya,” Demeter said in a defeated kind of fashion, stopping in the doorway and turning back to Persephone momentarily. “You want a moment alone?”

Persephone nodded, and her mama flashed a quick smile before she exited the room. The goddess laid back on her bed, staring up at her ceiling as hands rested on the growing swell of her belly. She hoped her baby couldn’t hear all of this; not just her words, but her thoughts and her feelings too. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes, trying to calm her nerves and ignore the voices as best as she could, until Hermes’ voice down the hallway alerted her. No point in dragging this on. 

She pushed herself upwards as Hermes pushed open the door, noticing the cautiousness in his demeanour. She couldn’t blame him, really, with her reaction today and many reactions previously. The worst she could remember in recent times was a few years back when she had shattered an almost empty bottle straight against the wall. 

“You ready to go?” Hermes asked, and with reluctance, Persephone nodded. 

-

A few morbidly curious mortal presences had crowded around the borders of the station by the time Persephone arrived, one arm linked with her brother’s and bag and suitcase slung over the other. Orpheus and Eurydice were a little braver, following the siblings hand in hand to the platform but choosing to stay towards the back. Persephone dropped Hermes’ arm, and the god took his own step back as the shrill ring of the train whistle sounded in the distance. He was fast approaching, her husband, and nobody wanted to be in close vicinity when the king and queen came face to face after only half of the time they should have been apart.

Persephone adjusted the heavy white fur coat rested atop her shoulders as the train pulled to a halt before her, the sound of wheels against the sturdy tracks temporarily drowning out the wretched song in the back of her mind. Her dark eyes were directed downwards at the bricks composing the platform beneath her, only lifting her gaze upwards when felt a familiar gaze rest upon her following the opening of the private carriage doors. There he was. Her husband, tall and menacing, dressed entirely in black with those sunglasses she always had hated. 

“You’re early.” Persephone snarled, feeling his eyes scan over her body even behind the unreadable darkness of his glasses, knowing perfectly damn well what he was searching for. 

“I missed ya.”

Hades extended a hand to his wife, and she had little choice but to take it.


	3. A Gathering Storm

There was a trace of tenderness in the way Hades took her hand, the kind that hadn’t been present in so very long between them, but Persephone was too mad to notice it. She avoided his eyes - still obscured by his glasses - as he helped her up into that train, catching the worried eyes of Orpheus as the vessel began to move and leave her summer world behind. She waited until the station was out of sight, the mortals but a memory, before snatching her hand away from her husband’s gasp and turning to the seats. The interior of their private carriage was always ridiculously expensive for an area only utilised twice a year. The souls weren’t allowed in here, didn’t dare even go near the area permanently reserved for only the king and queen. Her husband wasn’t too flashy when it came to displays of his wealth, but sometimes his pride got the better of him. 

Persephone wordlessly dropped her bag at the edge of one of the plush velvet seats, then sitting herself down next to it. Hades slipped his glasses from his face, folding them and slipping the pair into the pocket of his leather coat. His wife turned her attention from the fading world whirring by beyond the compartment window begrudgingly over to him, sighing as she properly took in the sight of the tall god. Handsome face and muscular body stood still, dark eyes just... staring at her. Wordlessly gazing at her body rather than her face. She couldn’t blame him, no, but would it kill the man to speak?

“Ain’t polite to stare.” Persephone snarked, straightening herself up against the back of the wealthy seating. 

Hades prowled across the carriage and over towards her, and she did silently relish the hint of confusion behind those dark eyes. She’d gotten him speechless, finally, even as he sat down opposite her and brought his eyes up to her face. Still distance between them even now. Well, of course there was, nothing had changed between them emotionally. A pregnancy wouldn’t magically solve their issues, a baby couldn’t smooth down the sharp edges jutting out with every word they spoke to one another. 

“It’s yours.”

That didn’t need to be said. He knew, she did too, but it didn’t hurt to pay him a little reminder. He could doubt her all he wanted, but it was his fruit growing inside of her and there had never been a single chance it would be that of anyone else. He was her first, would be her last and would certainly remain her only. 

“I know.”

Real wordsmith, her husband. He never had been all that talkative, but Fates, if there was any time for him to get some words out of that iron jaw it was now. She fell silent, hoping that her lack of speech would prompt some more from him. His mouth stayed firmly shut, the clack of wheels on the tracks beneath them the only noise within the carriage. The silence was unbearable, disconcerting in a way that made both gods look away from each other. Still, each stayed quiet. Stubborn things, the both of them, Now would be a good time for a drink, she thought, and her arm even reached out to her bag in a strange, habitual instinct to grab at a flask that wasn’t there. That piece of metal was her comfort source in these rides down, but now it was just her. Her and her husband and the beginnings of a baby alone in their carriage. Hades’ eyes went to her hand, then back up to her, brow knit with worry. Understandable, yes, considering her usual ways, but Persephone couldn’t help but roll her eyes. 

“Force’a habit, lover,” she reassured him bitterly with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I ain’t been drinkin’. I’m not that big of an idiot.”

The tension in her man’s face did not alleviate, he did not relax. He was just as stressed as her, it was apparent by his demeanour in the subtle ways only she could identify. 

Things went quiet between them again. Persephone turned her eyes back to catch the final glimpses of a fading summer, the season coming to a close three damn months early. Hades pulled some folded papers from the inner pocket of his pinstriped blazer, pen in hand as he began work at something his wife couldn’t care less about. She caught what he was up to out of the corner of her peripheral vision. Gods above and below, did that men ever rest? Even now, he found a way to force some work in. She took a deep breath, hoping to ease an irate fire in her throat caused not by a drink she was itching for. Deep breath in, out, like mama taught her once. Then again. Then again. It was a useless attempt, especially as the tracks beneath them began to shift downwards and darkness steadily approached. There was something obvious hanging over their heads, something he hoped she would just let go of, but she never would. Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn woman. 

“Hades, ya can’t keep doin’ this.”

The king looked up from his paperwork, face horribly unreadable in that moment. 

“What do you-“

“You know damn well what I mean,” the queen interrupted harshly before there was even a chance for him to take. No excuses, not anymore. “It’s June, lover, barely even. I ain’t scheduled to make a departure ‘til September. You can’t just come grab me whenever you feel like it. I got a job to do up here just the same way you got yours back home. People rely on me, husband, their crops die without me and you hardly even gave ‘em time to grow.”

“You’re my wife.” Hades began. Finally, the cat released his tongue. “You’re carryin’ my child. I wanted to see ya.”

“I’m carryin’ our child-“ she put emphasis on the ‘our’, she was in this just as much as him, “-down somewhere I ain’t got no help. I thought I’d have my mama to coach me through the first two waves, now what? Who do you propose I go to for help down there, huh? Any’a your precious shades used to be nurses?”

His gaze turned to a glare, stone cold as piercing as a thousand knives in her back. Nothing new. She’d seen that face before and she was sure she’d be seeing it many times again. The shades were a jab she knew would always give him hell. They both knew better than anyone that there wasn’t a single solitary ghost in their midsts he could remember a detail about, not even a name - and neither could they. Those poor souls couldn’t tell you anything about who they once were no matter how endlessly hard they tried. Hades had that information locked away in some drawer of his large desk in his larger office. Lives signed away and stored like they were nothing special. 

“I wanted to see ya.” Hades repeated in that hell-deep voice of his. Might have been the hormones, might have been something else, but this was starting to tug on Persephone’s final nerve. The man wasn’t even trying to justify himself in this. It was all about him, wasn’t it? Always was now, always about what he wanted. 

“You can visit. Ain’t nothin’ in our agreement against that.”

“Got a kingdom to run, wife.” 

“Not much of a kingdom if it’ll fall apart without ya for a day.”

They weren’t shouting yet. That was good, Persephone supposed, but she could sense they weren’t far from that marker. Hades went back to his papers, hoping she would do the same and quieten down. She didn’t. 

“Fates, do you even care about this?” Persephone smacked a hand down onto the surface of the desk, tugging the paperwork away from her husband so he would have no choice but to pay his attention to her. “We’re havin’ a child, Hades, I’m carryin’ your kid and all you do is grab me early and ignore me the way down. You know how stressed I been since this started? I went straight cold from my drink soon as I guessed what it was, I’m doin’ everything I can for this baby and you’re treatin’ it like nothing!”

“If I hadn’t been working then you woulda seen me sooner.” Hades growled out, and damn, ain’t that great? What a lucky woman she was, to have a husband working away so hard for her at the sacrifice of not coming to collect her the same month she left. He still looked so composed, she noticed, annoyed but holding himself together so well it only ground on her further. “Hadestown’s been goin’ through some changes, I’ve been making it a better environment for you and our heir to be. A place you’ll like better.”

“What did you do?”

“What I said. Improvin’ things.”

She wasn’t winning this, she accepted, and she drew her hand back to press against her temple. She was too tired for this. Her head hurt too much and her body ached too much and she was just already so tired. Her free hand travelled to her belly as she exhaled an exasperated sigh. If their baby could hear them, she hoped they wouldn’t remember. Obviously, a pregnancy wouldn’t provide a solution to the bickering or the arguing or the downright fighting, she knew of enough mortal women abandoned and children who had never met their fathers to know that - she was one of those children, after all. Her mother’s words swirled around in her head accompanied by Fate harmonies as her arm coiled itself protectively around her torso. Apparently, she looked as distressed as she felt, because the sight of her drew words from her husband without her needing to persist. 

“Somethin’ wrong? Is the child...” he asked, and she’d be damned if she could hear some concern in that low rumble of a voice. She opened her eyes and took in the sight of that face, catching some of the same worry, and shook her head. She had no idea what was going on in her husband’s head. Normally, she could read him like a book. Not now. Not with this circumstance. 

“We can’t keep up like this.” Persephone muttered, her safe hold around herself loosening somewhat. “I don’t like this fightin’ any more than you, I don’t... if we’re gonna be parents, I don’t want our baby growin’ up around all this.”

“No.” Hades agreed, volume lowered in what she identified as a subtle sign of surrender. At least they were on the same page with that. 

“We gotta try now. It’s not just for us anymore, like it or not.”

It was good timing on her part, as the train pulled itself into its second and only additional stop as she spoke. Both of Persephone’s hands went to the swell of her stomach, stroking it gently in hopes of easing her own anxieties.

“Welcome home, baby.”

She turned to Hades, who had already stood with her new suitcase in hand, and took his hand to help herself up from the chair. He adjusted the fur coat over his wife’s shoulders as she lifted her smaller bag. Still, he seemed to be in the dark in terms of what to do. One of his large, strong hands went cautiously near her torso, silently giving her a glance that asked for permission. They barely touched now, besides the customary touch of the hand on and off the train and a chaste kiss on the cheek before she left. The conception of this child hadn’t been the most loving, more of a desperate and carnal hunt for release and a method to convince them both there was still something worth staying in this marriage for. That was the closest she had let him get to her in years. A decade, give or take. But, if she wanted things to get better, that would have to change. How can you raise a baby if you can barely even do as much make physical contact? She gave him a nod and a faint little smile, giving him the go ahead. Man asked for permission to touch, not for bringing her home. 

“It’s your baby, too. You can touch all you’d like.”

Hades still took care when his hand went to her belly, and she brought one of her own smaller palms to hold his in place. 

“You feel that, baby?” Persephone spoke softly in her hushed, more motherly voice she had picked up over the past few months when she spoke to her child. “That right there’s your daddy. He can’t wait to meet you, baby, both of us are really gonna make a difference for ya.”

She caught a smile at the corner of her husband’s mouth as his hand rubbed gentle circles against the loose fabric of her dress. In that moment, things were good. He eventually did pull away, taking her sun-kissed, honey coloured hand into one of his own paled ones, and Persephone thought for a fleeting second that things wouldn’t be as hard as she thought. 

And then she stepped off the train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick thanks for the positive feedback on this so far! It’s my first shot at anything of this style, so I’m glad to see people are enjoying it. The next chapter will be a tough one but I’ll do my best to keep up my regular updates!


	4. Chant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this chapter retells the Hades and Persephone segments of the song, here’s a small warning that there will be arguing and threats of infidelity in here as well as a slight panic attack near the end.

From the instant she first set foot onto the brick-laid platform, every one of Persephone’s senses were overwhelmed with the dreadful welcome of the underworld. It hadn’t been a pleasant welcome in recent times, since he really began to get into his industrialism, but damn, had it always been this bad? A wave of smoky heat hit her like a train, the particles of ash drifting through the burning air stinging her eyes enough for her to squeeze them shut. The sound of Hadestown, while still distance, reached her ears and stirred dread within her to further approach the working domain. Crashes of hammers and rings of pickaxes, heavy metal clangs and morbid chants of those once living. She opened her mouth to say something, she didn’t know what, but she quickly snapped it shut as the unpleasant taste of smoke clung to her tastebuds, oxygen heavy with the byproducts of the factories littering the landscape beyond the wall. 

Was it like this last time? Had she forgotten it so quickly? The sound and smell of home, as drastically different as the kingdom was from when she first started calling it home, did not strike a chord of familiarity within her the way it should have given how briefly she had been away. How much had he gotten done over summer? And if it was all in her honour, the way he claimed it was, why didn’t she know any of this work had began? Given how little they had properly communicated in lieu of more unfavourable things showing up in their relationship, it escaped her outdoor possibly know what she wanted. Whenever she did tell him, it was either the spark to light a fiery fight or ignored entirely, because what she actually wanted went against his little capitalist fantasy for the once peaceful land of the dead. She wanted all of it she remembered gone. She had since the first brick was laid, since the first mine was dug. Back in those days, he’d tried to offer her his riches as a peace offering of sorts - even when things were in no way as dysfunctional as they were now, with still far more love than the resentment which at that point barely existed - and each time she had denied them. She was a woman of simple desires, she had no want for his gold or his silver or his diamonds. She had married Hades for him, not for what he owned - which was everything down here - but he never did seem to properly get that. She didn’t want him to build things for her. She didn’t want him to change everything including himself from the first day she came down there when they were newlyweds. If he really knew what she wanted, why couldn’t those basic facts get through his thick skull?

Still hand in hand with her husband, Persephone was guided past the station and towards the wall. The wall that she always hated, that he knew she hated but kept on building anyway, and it had grown so much in the short stretch of time she had been absent stretched further than her eyes could comprehend. Once they passed its concrete threshold, another surge of heat smacked against her in addition to the smoke-thick atmosphere. It was unbearable. She could hardly pull the heavy hanging oxygen trapped within the cage that was the wall of Hadestown down to her lungs. Her tanned hand dropped from her husband’s in order to fling the heavy white fur from her shoulders, freeing her upper body from the coverage. Now, she was thankful she wasn’t wearing her usual attire. The clothing was one of the gifts she would accept. Hades always kept her dressed up nice and expensive, just in case any unfortunate onlookers forgot who it was she married all those years, decades, centuries ago, but velvet is unforgiving. That stuff doesn’t breathe, doesn’t give any relief from how aggressively the sun always beat down on her mother’s domain every trip she made up for the summertime. It sure does look nice, though, and she couldn’t expect him to know the ins and outs of fabric practicality. Her new, loose fitting garment was far more suited to this new environment, though it hadn’t been what she had expected their use to be. 

“Why is it so hot down here?” Persephone spat, slinging her coat over the arm bended by the handle of her bag. “Up above’s probably gettin’ blizzards already. Hotter than a crucible in this place. The hell’a you been up to ?”

“Some new additions. Makin’ it more like your summer on top.”

“What does that-“

It was with those words that Persephone cast her gaze upwards, directing it back down almost instantaneously as she came to regret that decision. The heat was one thing, the lights were another. Brighter than the light of day above, they were, creating an aching burn behind her eyes even after only mere seconds of the glare boring into them. She cried out, rubbing her tightly shut eyelids with her fingers in an attempt to ease the pain.

“And the lights-!” She almost tripped along the rock-ridden pathway through the city before her eyes had reopened themselves, blinking to steady their way into adjusting to the brightness. “You tryna blind me or somethin’?”

“For you. For you and our child. Wanted to make the place more like your world, to make the transitions easier, somethin’ more to your liking.”

“You think this is what sunlight is?” Persephone questioned, that same bitter irritation overcoming her tone. “This ain’t right, Hades. Ain’t natural.”

“Did it outta love.”

Artificial illuminated their surroundings with a hellish yellow sheen, and - as much as the simple action pained her - she forced herself to take it all in. All of it, each detail, everything got worse the further she hauled herself alongside her husband right into the heart of Hadestown. It took a while for the horror of it all to really set in, because confusion kept it temporarily at bay. She was in a daze, potentially aided by the temperature that made the entire place feel like one of her mama’s damn greenhouses back up on the surface above. It was dizzying, at some points, the sheer volume of sights and sounds and smells and the brightness and the heat all attacking her at once with no kind of defence provided to her by her husband. 

There was something to snap her out of her trance. Well, not something, it was hardly singular. 

The workers. The shades who couldn’t remember as much as a name or do as much as stand with a straight back. Heads bowed in fear of the presence of their leaders - in Hades’ case, their owner. What could be seen of their faces was gut-wrenching, even as stained with coal dust as bruised from uneven surroundings in the mines as they were. There was... nothing. Nothing in those eyes, no expression to think of. Empty vessels of who they once were, restored to peak condition to really make sure no ghost was put to waste. Persephone already knew there was no concept of work shifts here. It was round the clock. Hades had ensured that when he realised they didn’t need rest. Why would they? More importantly, why should they get it? He thought so lowly of the mortals she’d been raised around and the souls that travelled from them to his domain. No respect, no consideration for what they could still feel and the toll this endless berate of laborious work he piled on them like another layer of bricks upon his wall could potentially take. 

“For me? You think this is what I want?”

They weren’t far from their house - that had always been far too big for one person half the year and still too big for two come the second, so at least the third addition would make use of it - when the abysmal state of things really worked itself under her skin. Those words spun around inside of her head as her uneasy steps started to slow down.

“Did you think this... this damn neon necropolis would impress me?”

For you. For you, he said. The burning heat. The blinding light. The remains of people she once knew, once provided for, forced into their uncaring king’s regime. And this was all done in her name, according to him. This was what he thought she wanted. Not a word had been breathed to her about anything he had been working away at since her departure, not a single letter to notify her of his creations or to ask her what it was that she wanted, because clearly he knew that better than her. He always knew best, it was always he who’s intuition reigned supreme. His own trust in his wife wore thin as his blood ran without her presence beside him, yet he did not ever ask for her input when it came to the ruling of their kingdom. His kingdom. This was in no way her realm, not anymore, no matter what he told her. 

She knew what he really meant. Why he did this all “outta love”. It wasn’t about making it more akin to her world - he hated her world. It wasn’t for her comfort, nor for their baby’s. This was another one of his attempts to win her over in a game he was bound to lose. Another way he thought he could make her stay despite how impossible that was for them no matter how much either wanted. She didn’t leave because she wanted to. She never did. She always, always left because she needed to. No matter how bad things got between them, she was never running away, but he just couldn’t get that. He never, never learned, that man. All those doubts crawling up his spine that pushed him to the world above to get his wife early and hold her down late. And even when she was there, they did little but fight, because everything was on a timer for him. When she was there, all he could think about was when she would be leaving. How every second that passed them by was drawing her inevitable departure closer. Somehow - despite the part he played in deciding upon the arrangement they were settled with - it was something he could never, ever manage to learn. And thus came his newest attempt to keep her down. Her and their child in his industrial hellscape for all eternity, never to be shared again. Damn what happened to the mortals, she concluded that he must think, because their death to him means little more than an extra pair of hands building that wall he took all the credit for. And he had the nerve to call those shades his children. As if they were more but a means to an end for him. As if they had any value in his stern eyes, like they’d be missed if they vanished and weren’t so easily replaceable with another poor soul on the assembly line. 

Hades had stopped in his tracks now, turning towards his with another unreadable expression of cold iron on that face of his. 

“You don’t know a single fuckin’ thing ‘bout what I want! Ain’t none’a this for me, it’s never been for me!”

If her husband made a move to interrupt her, Persephone didn’t notice. Perhaps if she were drunk, her voice would’ve been louder, her words would’ve been sharper, she would’ve pulled up some old argument to fire against him now. That wasn’t how this one went. 

“Gods above, lover, what’s become of you? You ain’t always been this way. This ain’t the man I married, this... this king’a some wretched city down below! Who the hell are you?” Persephone growled, her voice somehow ringing louder in her husband’s ears than the contrast crashes of noise surrounding them both. “Your selfish ass just wants me all to yourself. You don’t care in the slightest what happens above, do ya? Harvests die, people starve, and it’s all me and them that has to suffer for it! And for what? This hell on earth you call a kingdom? Ain’t none of this right, Hades, ain’t nothing right or natural ‘bout what you’ve done!”

“I did everything for you.” Hades took a step closer to his wife, really reminding her of just how much he loomed over her. He was a damn tall man, her husband, and right about now she was wishing she had worn one of her heeled pairs of boots in disregard for her mother’s advice. “I did it outta love for you, wife, everything I do is outta love for you. Be damned if it ever gets appreciated.”

His voice was so cold, a chill running across her skin even as forming sweat made her dense mass of curls cling to the back of her neck. She opened her mouth to snarl something in response, but Hades was faster as he tossed her suitcase to the ground. 

“If you don’t even want my love, I’ll give it to someone who does.”

Those words shot into Persephone’s chest like an arrow fired by Artemis herself. Her fearsome expression dropped in immediate procession to his threat, dark eyes going wide with fear. A lot had happened between them. A whole damn lot, brother. But never, never did that even crossed her mind as a possibility, be it on his part or her own. Her man was so different to his brothers, same genes as they carried but contrasting them in such a drastic manner. Not once had he displayed the slightest of signs he had so much as considered infidelity. So, expectedly, those words took her aback. She tried to speak, tried to breathe, but she opened her mouth and nothing came out. Her throat felt tight, vocal cords constricted by a particularly malicious snake. She was silent, staring up at her husband in frozen shock, able to do nothing more. 

“I’ll find someone grateful for all I’ve done, who’ll can appreciate what I give instead of flying back to their mother the second she calls. Won’t be hard. Ain’t like I’m short on options.”

The king turned his back, and the queen abruptly sprung back to life. She could have screamed at him, slapped some sense into that man that looked and sounded and felt like her husband but who’s words were so far from everything she had known of him when they married. But she didn’t. She was brought down to her last resort, reaching out and clinging to his wrist as he began to walk away. 

“Hades, no! I’m s-“

He didn’t even look at her when he tugged his arm from her grasp. She tried to run, tried to follow and keep on persisting, but this place was so new. New buildings and new edges she didn’t know her way around. This time, she did trip, foot catching an outward jut of rock from the ground beneath. Fortunately, Persephone managed to ease her fall with the palms of her hands so the only damage she physically dealt was some scrapes to her hands and knees. She tried to stand, but she was shaking. She was shaking and her world was spinning and everything was going blurry as tears filled her eyes. Her head raised, and she caught a distance glimpse of a man she once trusted walking away from her. Leaving her like she did him every year. 

Persephone hauled herself up with trembling reluctance, grabbing each of her bags and her fur that would be downright useless from now on and somehow forcing herself to trek the final short distance back to that building she supposed would be her home for now, but it felt like as much of a stranger as the god who brought her down. The tears spilling down her honey coloured cheeks were her only salvation from the heat she felt may make her faint any second now. Stepping into another set of walls her husband surrounded her by felt like a submission, like she was a poor wounded prey animal walking right into the hunter’s den, but she needed to be away from everything beyond them. She slammed the heavy doors behind her, resting her body against the wall and slowly slipping to the floor when sobs began to wrack her voice. Her chest rose and fell with strange intervals, miserable gasps torn from her throat as she covered her face with her cut-ridden hands. This could not be happening. Not now. This wasn’t what she wanted, never had it been. She didn’t want to meet the same fate as Hera. When she married that man, she had put all of her faith in him and trusted him with all she could. Even when she realised she would soon be swollen with his baby so far down their unsteady path, she believed they could change. That they could try and fix all of the mess they had made. 

The reminder of their baby sent a hand to her stomach, stroking comforting circles against it as she leaned her head back against the wall. Still there. Still growing away inside her. 

“It’s okay, baby, he don’t mean it...” Persephone whispered with a wavering voice, trying to steady her breaths as she dried her eyes with her spare palm. “Your daddy can be a real pain, you know, but he don’t mean that. He’s just tryna scare us. He’s comin’ back for us. We’re gonna be okay, you an’ me...”

Persephone spoke soothing words to the child forming inside her, and tried her best to believe them too.


	5. Why We Build The Wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some slight TWs for this chapter since we are approaching the heavier stuff: implied infidelity (nothing happens, but this is Persephone’s POV after all), minor sexual references

She hated the wall. 

She always had, even before she hated everything else. It was a wretched reminder of what her lover had become, of what was once had that slipped from her fingers like sand through the narrow pathway of an hourglass. When the first bricks went down, hauled by a workforce consisting of a noticeably smaller number of shades, things weren’t the best. Not bad and certainly not what they were now, but the waters beneath their raft were sweeping them towards the rapids. It was when his doubts started to swim to the surface, when he started to show up early - by a few days that turned into weeks, then into months - and when he went stir crazy thinking of his wife in the arms of the sun and not in his own. 

She had always known what the wall was for. He never said the words to her outright. Really, she couldn’t tell you what he had claimed it’s purpose was when they walked past it’s beginnings all those decades long gone by. Even in her determined midst to keep things good, to compromise with all of his compromising ways and hope that he would listen to her persistence against how he went against the earth’s natural cycle. Probably something about business back then, how he justified the wall’s construction, before anything about ‘the enemy’ that needed to be kept out was ever spoken of. He’d claimed something, but it had been little more than white noise to Persephone. She knew what it was for. Never was it built to keep anything out. 

It was built to keep her in. 

Her cage was a roomy one. Lots of space and only one other god to share it with - if one were to ignore Tartarus, of course. For centuries it hadn’t felt like a cage in the slightest. Not until her bars became visible through the fog of love, built in concrete and guilted with iron, did she realise she’d wed herself into a prison. A nice prison, sure, with a nice husband to keep her company, but a prison nonetheless. She’d walked in with no second thought, ate those seeds with the knowledge they would bind her to the underworld for half of every year that rolled on wether she liked it or not, and for a while, there was no place that made her happier. Just her and her man, lost in love they believed would harbour them from the storm. She had originally intended for no such trips to be taken to the surface save for a visit or two payed upon her mother, who was needless to say never one of her husband’s biggest fans. This was where she expected to ride out the rest of eternity. The seasons were an inconvenience to her rather than a moment of escape. That’s how things were when she was a young girl. When just two gods, two people in love could set the world spinning in harmony and in rhythm, when she was young and the world was young as well.

The walls went up, the machines rang loud, the furnaces burned hot and she bit back words less and less every year until it was all to much to bear. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly when their relationship took a sharp turn for the worse. The years all blurred in her head now, all mixed together like some tapestry of devastation and destruction that there was no escape from. Quite literally no escape. Even when she did slip past her bars before her captor came calling with an outstretched hand she was bound to take, the land of her creations, of her people, was no sort of salvation. As the memory of the ancient melody of love faded from the god’s minds, the world of sunlight and mortals twisted into a crude imitation of what it had once been long ago. Two seasons were lost entirely to the waves of time, leaving only biting winters and scorching summers in its wake. She had never experienced a winter in her life, given their causation stemmed from her absence, knowing it only in description through her peers of red blood. But Summer? Now that was a little something that Lady Persephone knew like the back of her ageing hand. When the heel of her boot met the bricks of the train platform, so began a five month heatwave - because it was never six, not anymore, people were damn lucky to get a nice solid five when they did. Blazing hot and freezing cold, that’s all it was, just like her and her man down below. It did not bode well for... well, anyone, really, the disruption of the natural way of the world. Before the harvests could be collected, the frost was laid thick and unforgiving, as hard to melt as it was to get it into her husband’s head that she is going to come back, that he doesn’t need to keep on coming up for her earlier and earlier and earlier because she is going to come back wether either one of them wants her to come back or not. To shut up those singing voices of doubt even though she had to leave him and no cage he build around her could stop that. 

She’d hoped early on that it would pass. He used to cry when she had to go, and she did too, both of them sobbing in each other’s arms until the very last second they had together. He’d beg her to stay, she disdainfully told him that she wished that she could. It was the early days when that happened, when she still reassured herself he would come to cope with her absence. 

When mama grew more tolerant of him - never liked him, still didn’t, but wouldn’t run him out of her gardens on sight - he came up for visits now and then, between overseeing the souls still yet to be employed in his inhumane regime of work and wall. During those visits, the best being the ones when he’d stay with her overnight, they’d do their best to pour months of missed love into one another’s touch starved bodies. Luckily, mama kept her mouth shut about the noise they made, but she’d give him a particular kind of glare the morning after. They’d spend the time in the sunlight together in Demeter’s gardens, occasionally traversing back to where they had first met. They’d married there too, same damn day. They had never been ones for taking things slow, with the exception of the pregnancy currently at hand. It wasn’t perfect, no, only getting to see each other so fleetingly through the hotter times of year, but she had held on to that belief that this would be enough to keep his fear at bay. That seeing his wife, not all year, no, even so sparingly in her months away would be enough to pull him through and help him wait. 

But doubt came in. It always does. Doubt comes in, walls go up, gods forget their love. 

Now she stood with an aching body and her gaze cast up to the makeshift sky that was an atmosphere of rock and a sun of persistent artificial brightness. She couldn’t tell anymore where the bricked ended in their eternal upwards stretch, but it was never enough. Never done was this work. To keep out the enemy, the king would claim. To keep in the queen, she knew he meant. She didn’t know what brought her out here, watching the bodies of people she used to call her friends keep their heads low and their backs bending as they repeated that mantra her husband instilled into them on a daily basis. The enemy is poverty, the wall keeps out the enemy, we build the wall to keep us free, spoken in disturbing unison whilst they hauled bricks between themselves. Even when he wasn’t here, the kings presence could be felt. Inescapable.

Persephone didn’t know where he was. She didn’t want to know either. They had scarcely seen each other since he made that threat, which still looked over her head like the clouds that forewarned the mortals of one of their storms above. He’d returned late that night after he walked away from her, and she didn’t want to question it for fear of the answer. The one benefit of this dragged out silent treatment with occasional disappearances on his part - work related, she soon identified, because damn did that man like admiring his “work” - was that she grew less afraid of the meaning his words held with every day that passed. He just wanted to scare her into silence, she concluded. She knew her husband in painstaking detail. If he had stepped out on her, she would know. She would find the signs in the way he spoke, the way he smelled, in a strand of hair out of place or a crease in his suit. Nothing. In reluctant admittance, it had worked. She hadn’t said an angry word to him since that initial fight. She hadn’t said a word to him at all, point blank period, both gods choosing to stay hidden away in their respective dens.

She didn’t want this - she couldn’t speak for him, though. She never had wanted this, but especially not now. The first three months of her pregnancy were spent in a bed alone, but it was worse whenever her husband was right down the hallway. They hadn’t slept in the same bed in... gods, how long had it been? She had always been the one to enforce that, but even her rage still burning for what that man had done to her wasn’t stopping her from wishing to go back. Some nights she considered just going in there, reclaiming her side of their marriage bed no matter what he said. What would he do? Would he yell at her, just full on kick her out or would he let her stay the night there? These pitiful fantasies stayed just that; fantasies. Never were they followed through with, the queen staying alone in a bed never intended for her with a baby for whom she feared the future. The only comfort she found was knowing that without her presence occupying it, her half of their bed would stay empty. 

Persephone’s head sharply turned to the side, alerted by an unusual sound. The sharp whistle of the underworld’s train, signifying it had pulled itself into the station. That was strange. It rang  
every day, bringing in new batches of shades to throw on the line, but this was off schedule - and her man loves his schedules. Everything happened on the strictest of time frames down in the kingdom of the dead. Where there so many newly departed souls that the train needed to start taking two trips?

The workers didn’t tear their attention from their excessive labour as the queen took several steps forwards, casting her gaze towards the distant station to see who it was that had just arrived. She expected to catch a glimpse of new crowds of shades spilling off that vessel. No such sight met her eyes. 

That was Hades. 

Unmistakably so. Even in the distance, that silver hair and pinstripe suit was her husband through and through. At first, she thought the best of him, something she hadn’t done in decades. Maybe he had decided to be a little softer to the souls, going out to escort them to come and sign away their identities. That thought was a fleeting one, gone as quickly as it came, when she saw only one passenger exit the train. A girl. Small, far smaller than the king who guided her forwards with a large hand on her shoulder, an action almost disturbingly intimate for a man like him. 

Persephone’s blood ran cold. She wanted to move; she didn’t know where, towards or away from that man, but she was firmly rooted by her boots to the rocky ground. She could only watch on in ever growing horror as her husband and the still unidentifiable girl approached. A mortal, surely, a tiny, starved looking thing. The queen’s tender expression fell suddenly slack when it hit her, when the realisation of who that girl was soaked in. 

That was Eurydice. 

Her dark eyes met the faded pair on the mortal girl’s face. Eurydice looked scared. So sad and remorseful, and the poor thing was still yet to realise the gravity of what her purpose here was. Hades had never done this before. Never had any mortal been important enough for him to even consider bringing them down alone or personally escorting them through the city. Surely, Eurydice has to know that. She had always been smart like that. She knew the ways of the world. She didn’t look the way Persephone remembered - her skin was faded, dark circles set deep beneath her eyes. Her arms were thinner, her face the same and the goddess could assume the rest of her body continued on with the starving trend. That fight and fire the goddess came to know of her was extinguished by the storms above. The Eurydice she came to know was bursting at the seams with life and love, a feisty young thing who had finally found the light in her mortal life. But this? This was only Eurydice in appearance. Barely even that. 

The girl’s eyes looked Persephone over, and she saw a jolt of despair strike on that hungry face when her gaze landed on her stomach. She was obviously showing now, even beneath the dark shroud of her new attire that couldn’t be less form fitting if she tried, and the look in those eyes told Persephone that she had not known. That or she expected it to be gone by now. The goddess couldn’t bear to keep looking at the poor girl, so she glanced up at the god that accompanied her. He did not look back. He dropped his hand from Eurydice’s fragile shoulder - fragile a word never destined to describe her - and stalked over towards his workers. His things, they were, through and through, and soon the songbird would join them. He voice began to rumble something, low and authoritarian that she can’t make out with her focus so far from any of his capitalistic mantras as he walked along the production line with a respectable distance between them. She could hear everything and nothing all at once, feel the heat on her skin and the ice in her veins, as her mind began to process what was happening through the delay the shock had brought on. 

Eurydice was dead - or at least would soon, if the king had stopped so low as to reap a mortal before their time. Truthfully, Persephone was lost on which of the two it could have been. If it was a corpse Eurydice had become, then most certainly she was looking the part. There was a blue tint to her lips, melted snow dampening her hair more than the whipping lashed of rain above had done. The girl’s clothes were scarcely enough to shelter her from the realities of winter when the two gods controlling it can hardly stand to look at one another. She was looking around her now, at what would soon become her final resting place.

When his strange ritual of power enforcement was complete, Hades turned, gesturing to the younger woman at his wife’s side.

“There are papers to be signed. Step into my office.”

That voice might as well have stopped Persephone’s heart. There was an undertone to that. A menacing kind of seduction, a deep and dark invite into the kind of power only she had beforehand come to know. She could feel Eurydice glance at her again, but her gaze was firmly trapped on Hades. She didn’t like him when he didn’t speak. But if this is how he was, she liked him less when he did. She didn’t need any extra hint to detect what he had done. He had seduced this poor thing, this poor, starving girl. He had lured her away, convinced her of desire, all to hurt her. To show her that yes, he did have options. To shut her right up so she wouldn’t complain no more about what he did. To scare his wife into submission by doing the one thing she had trusted he wouldn’t. His dark eyes landed upon his wife, meeting her with a glare, cold and empty and uncaring in a way she never recognised her husband doing before. She silently pleaded with him, pleading for him to just please, Fates, please stop because she doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want this to be what they become, she wants to try and change for them. If not them, the baby brewing within her body. His expression remained icy and unchanging.

She watched that office door close, and it felt like all semblance of salvation was possible for then had evaporated like steam into the heavy industrial air. This was it. She had doubted his threat. He had followed through. Reminded him of his power, and there was nothing she could do anymore. He had killed a mortal all to put her in her place, had ripped her away from all that had given that girl’s life a meaning. That girl was Persephone’s friend. Her fiancé was Persephone’s friend. Her mind began to race and slow all at once, so many thoughts she could not identify a single one. She stood there, silent and verging on a scream, before one clear idea comes to mind.

If she would now be bound to eternal misery, to be a mother of a child from a loveless marriage, then so be it. But the underworld was overflowing with misery. She had no use as a wife anymore, would be little help as a mother - being emotional wreck overrun with addictions that she was - and had not paid any mind to her duties as the realm’s queen in decades. She might as well do something right. Surrounding her were bodies that had known no rest, that had known nothing of the comforts her world above once brought them since that train rode them down. Misery would be her burden to bear from now on. They would know some happiness, even if it wouldn’t last.

“Anybody want a drink?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that this chapter took me a little longer than the previous! I was hoping to keep the updates coming on a daily schedule but the upcoming chapters could take me some extra time to work on. I also started writing a fic focusing on Persephone’s past with Orpheus on the side, so you can tell how much I enjoy putting Persephone in a motherly light.
> 
> In short, thank you for your patience, Our Lady of the Underground will be coming to you soon!


	6. Our Lady of the Underground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more TWs for this chapter: lots of drinking, talks of alcoholism, withdrawal and relapsing as well as attempted/implied infidelity

Her old speakeasy wasn’t how she remembered. It didn’t feel as homely, didn’t hold that same comfort she had recollected, but her excessive alcohol intake before even making it through the doors in previous years likely had something to do with it. If this is how things had always been in her bar - the only place in the whole damn underworld that was well and truly her own - then she would make do. A vase of wilted flowers slowly sprung back to life at the presence of their goddess returning. It was hard to bring life about down here, but Persephone was always full of it - quite literally at the moment. The shelves were still nice and well stocked with every liquor under the sun, and that was all that was really necessary to make this hole in the wall work. She wanted to reach out and down a whole bottle in one go. She held it back for now. 

“Remember this place, brothers? Been too long since I gave ya some peace.”

Persephone was never a cruel ruler. Not the way her husband was. She could be as iron and icy as the king, and had been in the past. Back when they were ruling together, when decisions were put in place with both monarch’s in agreement. Never had either of them been mad with power, exactly, but she had enjoyed the authority as a young woman. Going from a secondary goddess most mortals rarely considered worth their time to worship to one of the most powerful rulers over any realm was a big change to put it very, very lightly, and she had revelled in it until she had become well and truly accustomed. 

Even if she wasn’t cruel, she had rarely been outwardly kind. After stepping away from her queenly position, her method had been to ignore the world she inhabited for half of the year. It wasn’t ideal, no, but what about any of this was? It had served her well enough. She was always good at finding a distraction wherever she could, before her reliances were as bad as they had grown to be. The workers were something she would try her hardest to push out of even the darkest corners of her mind, for she knew focusing on that reality for more than a fleeting moment would be detrimental to whatever comfort she had still been able to find under the ground. But that was many years ago. Things were different now, more different than they had ever previously been in that kingdom. Some kindness was needed for everyone under the rule of the king.

Persephone had always been steady at running her speakeasy when it first started up, but there was always a bit of selfishness in her ways. It had been as much for her as it was for the shades, sometimes moreso. She could outdrink every last one of them - and usually did, to her credit. Some of her liquor she brought from the surface, the rest she’d grab from her husband’s expensive liquor cabinets. She didn’t care much for the price nor the quality, for she had never been one to drink for the taste. It was an added benefit, of course, but it was the effects in the aftermath she sought with every glass she emptied. 

“Don’t look so scared’a me, sister,” Persephone reassured one worker as she slammed a still empty glass down on the hardwood table in front of her. The shade looked nervous, but she couldn’t blame her in all seriousness. Her husband’s reputation tended to rub off onto her in the minds of the shades. She was complicit in all of this, she knew, but she chose not to acknowledge that right now. “I ain’t my husband. You lot are more like me than ya think.”

She shot the ghost a reassuring look, which was returned as best as it could be. The souls had long since forgotten how to express emotion. They rarely felt anything anymore. That was the appeal in them, wasn’t it? She turned from the woman who had long since forgotten her name; Persephone remembered, she knew details of these people that had long since faded from their memories. She knew what their favourite drinks were in the bar Orpheus worked in, she knew how well each of them could dance, she knew who she never got a real chance to say goodbye to when they died during her unyielding winter storms. They had been her friends once, long ago. Names were one of the first things a mortal would forget when their work began. 

“Must be drivin’ ya stir crazy down here, workin’ yourselves day and night,” the goddess remarked, leaning back against the bar behind her. Fates, her feet hurt. Why did all of her boots have heels? “You boys could use a little pick-me-up.”

She stepped behind the bar as the workers chattered encouragingly, running her fingers across the shelves coated in a thick layer of dust after months of neglect. Not as many months as it should have been. Her eyes scanned her vast selection, spanning from husband’s pricey whiskey to her mama’s dandelion wine. She grabbed some of the fancier stuff. It wasn’t like these souls would be able to tell, really, but they wouldn’t get anything like this from the other god down here. 

“I can give ya what it is you crave, brothers,” the queen purred, glancing over her shoulder and meeting the eyes of one particularly tall shade. Tall like her husband. Even here she couldn’t escape the thought of him. “Little somethin’ from the good ol’ days, huh?”

The workers cheered as she raised one bottle in the air, and she was sure she could see a little hint of that life they once had in their empty eyes. They were all physically in perfect shape - another idea from her husband’s head, ensuring he’d never have a dwindling workforce - but they were unmistakably corpses. Their skin was shallow and grey, their eyes void of expression and memory of what once had been. There was nothing that could be done about that fact. Death was a part of the natural way, a necessary step in the cycle of life. But, like all things, Hades had never been satisfied with that. Not with his six month share of his wife, not with his ownership of stagnant souls. They had still not known rest, these people, these long dead mortals. They had been working since pen met paper up in that office. That office where Eurydice was right now, Persephone’s sharp mind chose to remind her, where she is undoubtedly doing more than just signing some contract for the king who killed her.

The workers didn’t appear to appear to catch the flash of dismay on her face. Good. She wasn’t about to turn this into a group therapy session. 

“I got all the goods from up top right here.” Persephone’s voice was forcibly smooth, for if it wasn’t she would have let her sober misery present itself. She slid both bottles across the tables which were hungrily grabbed at by the shades. A smile found her lips as she watched one girl - visibly younger than some of the rest, but she could have been down below for longer than anybody else there for all Persephone could actually tell - drink as much as she could before another snatched it from her grasp. “Ain’t gotta fight, brothers, we got plenty to go ‘round. C’mere.”

Persephone beckoned and gestured towards her bar, which she was soon standing behind once more. She leaned her hands on the surface as the stools were quickly occupied. 

“You miss your times up above?” the goddess asked rather genuinely. Could they remember anything beyond the underworld anymore? “I got all ya could ever want-“ another shade’s glass was filled, “-got the wind, got the rain, got the sunshine too, if you can handle more heat than what my ol’ man’s got burnin’ up out there. Ask me, brother, you shall receive.”

It wasn’t long before every last one of them had some alcohol in their systems - with the exception of Persephone, of course. Every passing second was an addict’s idea of torture. Surrounded by the sight and scent of what could so easily make her forget what was happening not too far away from where she stood and unable to take a mere sip. Even to disregard the life inside of her, she couldn’t do that in front of these people. Her people. She didn’t have much, gods no, but she was clinging to the only dignity she had left whilst her husband disgraced the day they married. 

“Thank you, y’majesty.”

That stung to hear. Persephone never really liked the titles. She tested it out when being a queen was still something new and exciting for her, as was being a wife, but it felt... unnatural. She never wanted to be better than anyone, though her position as a goddess even before her elevation of power had always placed her above the mortals she had so early on integrated herself amongst. Even with all the damning she did her husband and he did her on occasion, the workers could not let it go. She was hardly set apart from him in their eyes - and she hated it. 

“Oh, don’t you gimme that, sister. Ain’t no need for thanks or titles or any’a that.” Persephone dismissively waved her hand, leaning across the bar surface on one elbow to face the ghost directly. A woman, not young but still appearing youthful, with skin and eyes darker than her own. She didn’t seem afraid anymore, none of them did after she’d passed the bottles around, but she didn’t view Persephone as being where she wanted. 

She wanted to be on their level, firmly grounded to the same rocks and stones that they were. Brother, sister, all her endearing little terms, every last bit of it was to try and remind them she was one of their own. She never would be, she knew that, not with blood precious as the gold it resembled, but Fates, she would not let that prevent her from trying. 

“I ain’t my husband. Ain’t never been. He’d all ‘bout gettin’ the power and keepin’ it. That ain’t my style, brothers, did y’all hear that? I ain’t your queen in here, I’m one’a your kind. C’mon, what’s my name?”

Her name was a dangerous one. The Bringer of Death, she was. Most mortals wouldn’t even dare to do so much as think it, let alone speak it into existence. There were a lot of rumours about her name. Her least favourite was that, should you find yourself feeling brave or stupid enough to say it, you’ll have to answer to a jealous King Hades, because he wouldn’t want anyone talking about his wife in any manner, desiring or admiring or disrespectful or whatever other way there was to say something as simple as a name. She despised that one in particular because of how accurate it was. She could very easily picture him doing such a thing if the journey up didn’t tear him from his work and he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. For a man who talked so much of work, he did little more than the papers. 

She tried her best to coax the word out of them - a simple four syllables that made up her name. No luck. 

“Alright then, if you’re gonna be like that, I’ll tell ya myself. My name’s Persephone, brothers, and don’t you forgettin’ it!”

In all the admiring cheers and howls they gave her, Persephone could not fully take it in. She could make them happy, yes, but when the day drew to a close they would be back on the line and she was standing idly by doing nothing about it, all while wearing their oppressor’s ring. Well, maybe she wouldn’t be for much longer. Maybe this assertion of his power over her was his way of telling her things were done, that this wreck of a marriage wasn’t worth sailing any longer. Her smile suddenly felt vastly more forced when that thought occurred to her. This time, someone caught on. 

“D’you miss up top too?”

Persephone turned to her side, facing the source of the voice. That same tall man, taller than the rest of the workers, large hand nursing a newly filled glass. She rolled her eyes playfully, pushing a bottle over to another shade who’d already emptied an impressive amount. She could still outdrink them if she wanted to. Well, if she could, because she’d be damned if she didn’t want to. 

“Gods above, do I, brother. This old manhole brings me down as much as all’a you boys.” Persephone admitted. “My husband ain’t been makin’ it much easier, let me tell ya.”

“Have some, then! Ain’t like you to turn it down, ma’am.”

Persephone chose not to comment on the lack of her names usage and raised an eyebrow. The worker in response slid his glass towards her. Oh. Oh, now that was not good. It was right there, quite literally just within her reach. She shook her head, though it was reluctant.

“Would if I could, trust me. Takes a lot to make it through the winter, but...” she sighed and pointed to her very obvious sign of pregnancy. “Ain’t an option for me right now.”

“It’s just one glass!” another added in excitedly, slurring her words a little. They didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Understood the basics of what was up with their queen right now, yes, but they were clearly oblivious to why she couldn’t drink. She always drank. With them and without them. She was more fun when she drank, she was looser when she danced and louder when she sang, and when she had gotten enough into her she could forget what was happening beyond the safe walls of her secret little speakeasy. They didn’t know, not anymore, why now would be any different. 

Persephone didn’t bother to think about that. It didn’t even occur to her. Her salvation was right in front of her. Right there. She didn’t need another voice to encourage her sobriety to break. 

She grabbed the glass, full almost to the brim, and downed the full contents in one desperate swig. 

The burn that the liquor brought on in the back of her throat was enough to make her gasp in relief. She hadn’t tasted anything like this in months, far, far too many months. The liquid felt like paradise against her tongue and effective immediately, she wanted more. She needed more. Gods above and below, she felt like she might die if she didn’t. She needed is strong and fiery and needed it right now. 

The workers cheered her on, taking gulps from their own glasses or bottles or whatever it was they were holding, and that only made it worse. This was fine, she decided, how couldn’t it be if she was surrounded by the support of her people like she was on the surface? 

“That’s a taste’a sunlight there, brothers, you hear me?” Persephone proclaimed, which was met with more cheering. She handed the glass back to the shade who blessed her with it, the man quickly refilling with with a bottle left unwisely unoccupied by a skinnier companion of his. She gave that shade, the real tall one, a look over. If her husband really wanted to hurt her like that, if he wanted to drag her name through the dirt he had once laid her younger self in, then she could do the same. Never in her centuries of existence did she have eyes for anyone but her man, not even now, but... well, he wasn’t too far from his shape. He was muscular and tall, like her man, his hands were big and rough. She could just shut her eyes and pretend those hands belonged to Hades. Not the Hades who had glared so coldly at her before leading that tiny bird into his cage, not the Hades who was probably holding her down and making her cry like a canary, because that wasn’t her husband. That wasn’t her Hades. No, her Hades was the man who begged on his bended knees for her love, the man who had fought the gods themselves for her hand in marriage and would have undoubtedly done so again if the need arose, that was her Hades. She could pretend that was her husband the way she imagined Eurydice was probably pretending she was in the arms of her fiancé. It wouldn’t be as hard for Persephone. Even with all of this worker’s similarities aside, Persephone was used to pretending. She couldn’t imagine that he would deny her. This man hadn’t known the touch of a woman since death, and she was a goddess. A fertility goddess at that. Even with the beginnings of another man’s baby swelling her up, she looked damn good. 

Persephone gave the man one last look over, opening her mouth to say something. A proposition, perhaps, an invitation to ruin her husband’s reputation amongst his workforce the way he was likely doing to her. Words didn’t come to her. She was silent in the noise of the dead finally knowing salvation. She wanted to hurt him, she wanted to hurt her devil of a husband more than anything right now, but she couldn’t.

She was a coward. 

She filled a second glass and drank it up even faster.


	7. Flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more TWs for this chapter: mild mentions of past sexual situations, mentions of alcohol and drug use, possible/implied infidelity, addiction/relapsing, revenge and potential miscarriage.
> 
> Stick with me here, it won’t all stay this rough.

It was late into the night when Persephone returned to the house, though the lights did not reflect as much. Unfading as their brightness was, the goddess’ internal clock was always programmed to the day/night cycle up above. She didn’t know how the hell her husband worked. In more ways than just that. Some days she could read him like an open book. Others, he was as difficult to comprehend as it was to feed a family in a freezing winter. 

Their house - his house, really, his house in his kingdom - was always quiet when they weren’t fighting or fucking. Usually fighting nowadays. The occasional time together every decade that spawned this growing problem in her belly held no trace of the intimacy they used to revel in. It was little more than a pitiful attempt to relieve some of their tensions that built and built with every brick the wall grew higher. It got out frustration, too, vented out that anger in a way that wasn’t a new argument or an old one she decided she wasn’t finished with. It was never long before they were apart once more. Love her and leave her, that’s what he’d do, as would she. Her more often than him. Barely even loved each other that much anymore even with their bodies intwined. With only two people occupying such a large building, it was hard to make too much noise without downright screaming. That only happened sometimes. A baby would break the silence as well, but Persephone couldn’t say with much semblance of certainty that her child would ever be welcomed in this place. She was bound to come back every year, sure. He wasn’t bound to accommodate her. 

The energy she had put on in her speakeasy for the benefit of the dead was gone the split second she was out of their view. Persephone had learned to be a real damn convincing actress as life beat her willpower further and further into dust. She was only two drinks deep, but she was on edge for more. It hadn’t been enough. It was never enough. Still, she hadn’t drank a full bottle of anything. Her resolve hadn’t been broken just yet, even by the unaware encouragements of the workers. It was hard to ignore her pregnancy as much as she presently wished that she could. All it served was as a reminder of the man that put it there. 

She needed to see him, she decided. If saw him, then she’d know what he had done. She could catch the smallest of things out of place on him. That’s what millennia of marriage would do for a woman. Maybe the confirmation would be too much. She was already a wreck in the emotional department, moreso than usual, thanks to the obvious. If she saw her husband as he always was, she would have to face the fact that he had gone out of his way with an elaborate lie just to cause her pain. If he wasn’t, well.... Maybe that was a reality she wouldn’t be eager to face when it was right in front of her, but she wasn’t thinking for the near future how she tended to. In her typical headspace - alcohol eased, of course - Persephone was always focused on what was soon approaching. Every instant above, the threat of her husband’s arrival loomed above her no matter how much she drank or injected, and down below the only thing that got her through besides her vast expanse of substances was the thought of leaving. When did things get this bad? 

Persephone’s feet began to move forwards without her even realising. Only two drinks deep - and not even two particularly strong drinks, mind - but emotions were quickly catching up on her. Once the mask was dropped, she was vulnerable to the demons down here, and the weight of all that was in her mind and body weighed too heavily to let her run. She knew where Hades was, there was only one room in their entire estate he actually bothered to make use of besides the bedroom they no longer shared. She wasn’t much better, in all honesty, considering how little she actually stayed within these sets of walls. Her speakeasy was more of a home to her nowadays. He had an office here too, did Hades, because of course he did. He couldn’t just leave his work behind, despite how meaningless it was in the grand scheme of things. Persephone didn’t know what all those papers he hid himself away in were for. She didn’t care to find out either. Whatever they were, he utilised them as a distraction the same way his wife could with drinking. They were more alike in their less admirable than anyone would ever admit, least of all themselves. 

His study wasn’t far, which Persephone was thankful for. It was on the same floor she’d entered. Even the thought of a staircase made her legs ache a little more. When was the last time she’d even gone anywhere near that room? She’d steered clear of that entire area of the house, keeping her distance and holding her husband at arms length the way she had done when she first stopped sharing his bed. In better times, easier times in their marriage, she’d show up in that doorway with her best physical aspects on display when her need for her man burned just a little too strong. He was an organised person, but he never seemed to mind the mess they’d make of his desk when he laid her out there. Persephone wondered if he’d minded if Eurydice had done the same.

The soft sounds of her boots against the floor might as well have been thunder echoing throughout the silent hallways. A quiet man was her husband. Always was. Even when they were fighting, it was always her voice reigning supreme. Volume was usually the only leverage she could get over him, even in the circumstances when she was the one in the right. She dragged a hand along the wall as she walked, her honey-coloured skin becoming noticeably faded with the lack of natural light now. How in the name of all gods she had managed to get any semblance of sleep with that artificial glare beyond the boundaries of this building was a question even she was unsure of. Sharp nails scraped against the dark wallpaper as she approached his unwelcoming office door. Closed. Always was. Closed off just like he was nowadays. Always closed, the door to his study, strangely never locked. Maybe he still thought she’d come in one night begging for him the way she did as a then younger woman to her still older but comparably-younger-than-now husband. She’d be giving him some of that satisfaction now. Not the same way she used to, Fates no. But she was coming to him nonetheless. This was what he wanted, undoubtedly. She inhaled a deep breath, grasping the handle of the door firmly. What was she doing? What would she even say once she saw him? How was a woman supposed to respond in her situation? Singing doubts began to harmonise throughout her head again, three voices mocking her every move. But she’d had drinks. Only two, sure, but a sip of liquid courage was better than none. She had no idea what she would say or do when she saw her husband; if he would speak first, if she would start shouting, if it would end uglier than it began. But she had to see him someday. With a determined certainty, she pushed the door open. 

The sight she expected to be met with would have been a normal enough one to see. Her husband in his dark study illuminated only by a lamp on his desk. Books stacked around him as he meticulously examined paper upon paper, contract upon contract. Light reflecting on the glass of a well-stocked liquor cabinet only she tended to frequent once upon a time. Keeping his head low and not meeting the eyes of his wife. He would look up once she announced her arrival properly, though she never had needed to. Who else would have the gall to enter the king’s lair without layers of permission beforehand? In her long past methods of seduction in those situations, his eyes would rarely stay focused upon her face for long. In more recent times, when she showed up to yell at him for something or other, it would be an irate scowl at most and a blank glare at least. Either way, either circumstance, she knew what to expect in this room. She knew what she expected to see. But now, that pattern at been, after centuries of the same, broken. 

Persephone stood silent in the doorway, the only light clearing the indistinguishable darkness of the office coming from the lights outside, shining through windows with heavy curtains undrawn. It shone against the surface of his dark wooden desk, unnervingly clear of books and papers and contracts. 

He wasn’t there. 

Persephone slowly shut the heavy door behind her, not all the way, blinking in the inky dark swarming the room as if it would change her surroundings somehow. This couldn’t be. This wasn’t right. He was always here. Always. He was a man of routine. That hadn’t changed even among all between them that had. Why would he now? Why would this make the most fundamental of his methods suddenly switch on her? Persephone moved forwards into the room and soon she found her hands on the desks hard surface, far too clear of the organised clutter she came to know. The solid wood beneath her palms might as well have been the coals fuelling the foundries eternally blazing in the ground beneath her feet, for she drew her touch away just as quickly. Empty. This room was always silent, but it was never empty. At least, not when he was in the building. Only in the sparing hours he did allow himself to sleep did he leave this room unoccupied, choosing instead to keep himself in the company of an empty bed. And Persephone, now she had always known her husband’s routine like the back of her hand. She didn’t need to check to know that he wasn’t in bed, late as the night was, it was too early for that. Even if he had decided to get an early rest, he would have left some sign of having been here. She didn’t need to see him to know she’d gotten her answer. 

He was still out in his office. Still with her. 

Hades was a man of subtleties most of the time. He made no grand displays of his wealth to show off to impoverished mortals like some other offshoots of their family. He found elaborately spoken metaphors to use rather than admit to what all of his inventions and creations were always for so she could never technically hold it over him in a method he was unable to deflect. Persephone was never like that. She was blunt with her words, she was direct and firey. She saw the world for what and how it was and spoke just the same, with very few exceptions to the rule. That’s where they differed, her and her husband, with her approach far more up front and obvious than his own. She’d tell him how mad she was about him pulling her down with him as soon as those train doors slid closed. He would keep his mouth shut about how she still left him every single year, instead letting it swirl up inside some dark corner of his ever-working mind until he could let it loose when the eventual fighting became particularly gruesome. He was more strategic in his ways, more calculated in contrast to his wife’s emotional outbursts. Sometimes, though, his subtleties failed on him. Sometimes Persephone just didn’t catch well enough on to what he was trying to say - rather, what he was trying to imply. Sometimes, a more direct approach was needed. 

Persephone stared down at the ground, and she felt a sinking emptiness in her chest. It didn’t get more direct than this, did it? Not with him. Everything was piecing together now. The threats he’d made, the look he’d given her, the empty house he’d left her with. This was it. They were done now, surely, and this was how he had decided to tell her. Informed his wife of his new decision in as blunt as he could be without actually having to speak a single word to her. She would continue to come down here. She would make her yearly trips. But she would never again be welcome here. He would find a new wife soon enough. Hell, maybe he’d even settle for Eurydice, if he could work his wicked ways skilfully enough to convince the girl to agree. He was never forceful with his proposal to her. Maybe he would be next time around. Next time he stole some pretty young thing away from the realm above their heads. Persephone couldn’t say. She didn’t know that man. That man wasn’t Hades, not her Hades. He would find a new wife and she would be swept to the sidelines, once again some secondary goddess that mortals would pay no mind to. No longer a queen. A divorced divinity with an unwanted child, forced into a stranger’s kingdom every year and bound to watch him rule with a new woman at his side. 

The silver of her wedding ring felt like ice wrapped around her finger, it’s metallic glint catching her eye as her vision started to blur. She had been crying so much, so, so much since she came down it was almost shameful. She was a god, she was a queen. The queen of this damn realm, no less. Not for much longer, clearly, but why did she care? She hadn’t been happy in this situation for years upon years upon years now, wasn’t this what was best for them? He would be happy without her, she should want that if she loved him, shouldn’t she? Fates, did she even love him? He didn’t anymore, perhaps hadn’t for a good long while. This little plan of his, maybe, hadn’t been a spontaneous decision. He could have been planning this since before the seeds were even planted in Persephone. He could have the divorce papers filed and ready to sign in the drawers of his desk, in here or in his office where she knew that he was. With his new little mortal plaything. 

She shouldn’t care. He was hurting her. He knew he was hurting her. He wanted to hurt her. She shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t let him get to her like this. She had always been so good at that before now. And yet, all she could do was wallow in her solitary misery with a baby inside her. A baby who would never know it’s father’s love. Just like her. This child was cursed to her own fate. Raised by a mother abandoned by a past lover, never to be regarded of any renown by mortal worshippers. Hades had wanted children. They had never discussed it before all of this had begun, but she knew he wanted an heir. For political reasons as much as personal, he wanted a family. A real one, beyond a bitter wife he saw for six months every twelve that passed. But reproduction wasn’t hard to do. It had taken them a while, but if - no, when - he found his new woman, maybe even made her his wife, he could have a son or two by his side soon enough. Likely within the next decade. This was nothing. A drop in the flood, a flower in a storm, petals on a stream passing him by. 

But she’d seen the look on his face. He wanted this baby. She had seen those eyes when he’d touched her stomach for the first time on that train journey. She’d felt the tenderness of his touch, she’d seen the smile tugging at that iron jaw. As much as she disliked it, he had come so early because of this ordeal. He wanted this baby. He loved this baby. No amount of resentment for her could change what she knew. This would be his only regret in separating from her, not being able to father this specific young god. He loved his child. He just didn’t love her. 

Persephone grit her teeth, trying to ignore shaky breaths as she turned on her aching heels to leave. Then she stopped. Her eyes landed on the wall to her left, a warmly-toned shine on the glass doors of the liquor cabinet. 

Something twisted inside of the goddess’ body. Her breath caught and her throat tightened. But then, it all settled. 

He was hurting her. Fine. He could hurt her all she liked. 

She would hurt him too. 

Persephone’s eyes never left the silhouetted contents of the cabinet as she flung the doors open, calming herself with deep breaths. If this child, this thing infesting her womb, was all she was good for in his eyes, she’d make sure he’d divorce her sorry ass with not one regret. This pregnancy was no more than a reminder of him, and it would be scarcely better once the child was actually born. One look in its eyes and she would see nothing but him, she would remember nothing but everything they once had and everything they had lost. Persephone grabbed onto the first bottle in her reach. A big one, unopened and expensive. Strong, too. Good. That’s what she needed. She would overcome the physical tolls of this by herself. He’d likely send her away the second he realised what she’d done, the moment he saw her lower half drenched in golden ichor and her stomach flatten unnaturally. Maybe she’d tell him with words, maybe she’d leave around clues to illustrate her actions. Give him a taste of his own medicine. She’d be able to have hers soon, now, once this was dealt with. A nice load of morphine back in her veins, wine drank down without a single solitary care for the consequences. She wouldn’t have to listen to him tell her that she’d had enough anymore. She’d never have to speak to him again. She felt a pang in her chest at the thought. She didn’t bother to decipher wether it was good or bad. 

She tried to twitch the bottle open with her hands, but to no avail. Frustratedly, she smashed the glass neck against the sharp corner of the cabinet. She’d cut her mouth like this. She didn’t care. She didn’t need to keep herself pretty for anyone anymore. She didn’t need to keep herself pretty or sober or quiet for anyone now or ever again. She could say with certainty that she would never remarry. Hell, who would want her? She wouldn’t take herself, were she an onlooking man or woman in want of a wife. Even from an economical standpoint; without the king, she offered nothing of benefit. Sure, she was a god, but no longer would she be a god of importance. The status came from her union, the wealth she’d so swiftly wed herself into as a girl so young and naive. Marrying her was confining oneself to an emotionally unpredictable addict who would leave for her ex-husband’s domain no matter how badly anyone may want her to say. She had always been a sorry excuse for a wife. 

Persephone inhaled deeply, ignoring the way her hands shook as she raised the bottle to her lips. This was nothing out of the ordinary for her. This was not the first bottle she had emptied and it would not be the last by a long shot. She’d done this before. No need for nerves. She closed her eyes tightly, tilting her head back and gripping the bottle with crushing strength. The razor sharp glass jutted out, slicing her lower lip as she felt the contents start to fill her mouth. All happened in one rapid motion, but it might as well have been hours with how methodical it all felt. Only the first few drops had slipped down her throat, the delectably bitter taste coating her tongue, before her body jolted in shock. Her dark eyes went wide and the bottle suddenly slipped from her grasp, falling to the floor as the goddess gasped in horrified shock. Her spare hand flew her her throat as the glass shattered against the wooden floorboards beneath her, choked gasps tearing at her throat as she stumbled backwards. She looked down at her body, down at her stomach, and suddenly felt sickened by guilt. 

Something had kicked. 

Persephone coughed up and sputtered whatever she hadn’t managed to swallow, shocked eyes watching as the dark liquid spilled across the floor. Her feet faltered beneath her as she stepped back from the cabinet, stumbling and falling to the ground. One hand flew behind her to break her fall, the other went around the swell in her torso in a protective motherly instinct she didn’t know she still had. The impact must have hurt, but she felt nothing. The shock of what she had done left her numb. What she had already done tonight, and what she was about to do just seconds before. Sharp intakes of breath, panicked inhales and exhales wracking her frame that were interrupted by a second kick that sharply dragged her back to reality. This child had unnervingly good timing. Her cheeks felt cold with the wetness of tears that had fallen from her eyes some time she could not pinpoint. Her head fell back against the floor, cushioned by the mass of curls contained within a hairnet, as the horror of what she had almost done seeped further and further into her skin. What was she doing? 

Her arm coiled around as much of her waist as she could reach, holding her body which contained that of her baby. Dear gods above, Mother Nature who had raised her, what on her dying earth was she thinking? Her heart raced within her chest, her palm cradling her belly and hoping that her child - her son or daughter, nameless and unborn - would forgive their mother for what might have been done. 

“I’m sorry, baby... Mama’s so, so sorry...” Persephone’s voice broke with sobs that worsened as she spoke. She didn’t hate this child. Hated its father, maybe, if she was able to ignore that old love still burning somewhere inside of her. But never, never did she hate what he had made. Not this creation of his, because finally it would be hers too. Part of her would finally be seen in his final product, something that he could never remove. Memories would be painful, of course, when she inevitably saw her long gone husband as the child quickly grew, but death? It would destroy her, to lose this, she realised as she lay there, because she wanted this too. The same way that Hades had. She had kept it this long. She had found comfort in the presence of this child in her life, even before its arrival into the world. She could not do this. She could not kill this baby. She could not hurt him like that.

Why? Why was it so hard? Why was he so damn good at hurting her and she was unable to fire back in powerful return? Try and try as she might, he always won. He always got what he wanted. He always got her too early and he always kept her too late, he always wounded her deeper and he always won their fights. She wanted him to know how she felt, but no matter how badly she wanted to do so, she was all bark and no bite, all talk with nothing in tow. She wanted to hate him. She wished that she could hate him, because hating him was easier than loving. He deserved it, didn’t he? For all he had put her through, past and present and surely future, why shouldn’t she hate him? Why couldn’t she? Why, after all that they had done to one another, after he had oh so very clearly shown her how little he cared for her that very day, why did she still have to love him so much?

“We... we’re gonna be alright, baby, you an’ me, we don’t need him,” she spoke again, her voice uncharacteristically small. “I’m gonna give you a good life, you’ll be whoever you want to be... we don’t need him...”

Persephone didn’t believe a word that she said. They hurt to say. It hurt to know that not a single word she said meant a thing. She couldn’t even convince herself of her own lies anymore, for she knew far better. She had seen the struggles of her own mother. She had not known it all in her childhood, she had not understood the shouting or the crying or why her father never wanted her nearby. But Fates, it had not been pleasant, to say the least. It had done her some long lasting damage, but this? This was so much more extreme. Unavoidable as well. This would ruin a child, this arrangement they would be trapped in until the end of time. She didn’t know what to do. Panic pounded within her chest, tears stung within her dark eyes, more words failed to escape her as they were overcome with pathetically whimpered cries.

At some point, Persephone fell asleep on the study floor.

She was awoken some unknown period of time later by the sound of the estate’s front door clicking shut and a hallway light illuminating the corridors outside. The slight open crack of the door allowed light into the study. Too much. Hades’ heavy feet echoed in the silence of his large house, and Persephone kept her eyes closed as those rattlesnake boots approached her location. Eventually, when they had drawn close before stopping entirely, Persephone felt those piercing eyes examining her form. She opened her own eyes slightly, a painful jolt running through her chest as she watched his gaze flick to the open doors of the liquor cabinet, then the shattered remains of a bottle at the ground beneath it. She knew what it looked like. Still struggling with tiredness and pain, both emotional and physical, she could not read a singular look on his face nor could she breathe a word in her defence. He looked back at her, the supposedly passed-out-drunk body of his pregnant wife who’s open eyes he failed to notice, and murmured a faint “tch” before turning from the room.

“Mama was right.”

Hades stopped, halting in his tracks at the sound of that voice. He hadn’t considered her to be conscious. He had seen her in far worse states before. Those words stung. He knew what they meant. He knew what her mother had tried her hardest to convince her of so many times over and over again through their marriage. What followed, however, was a sword through his body.

“You’re no better than your brothers.”

Hades stayed frozen still. Persephone could tell as much, for his footsteps were not heard again for a solid few seconds afterwards. But even so, they did. He walked away from her. He always did. He always, always left. So did she. 

She stayed laying there, a woman abandoned in a realm soon to be no longer her own in the slightest, and sleep slowly kept back behind her eyes. She wanted to be numb. She wanted to be immune to all of this in the same way that she thought he was to her. She wanted to be able to weather the storms, to soldier on through this raging war.

Persephone and Hades both fell asleep alone. Each believed the other to have committed a sin most unforgivable. Neither knew what would become of them in the aftermath. Both certain that a millennia long marriage would soon be brought to an untimely demise.


	8. Papers

In the coming days, Persephone developed a habit of laying awake all ungodly hours of the night and sleeping through most hours of the day. There was no difference in terms of light, of course, the neon shine of the electric city was unfading and unfaltering, and it was a sure fire way to avoid facing what would most certainly be a conversation - argument, more like - of flames and venom. Strangely enough, it was only her that the light seemed to irk. Her body’s willingness to adapt to her new, hellish - besides the literal aspect, of course - environment had come to a screeching halt. Were she not, well... the way that she was, eating would have been neglected; but alas, cravings took the reigns. She’d throw something together for herself, shove it down her throat, try to ignore the nearby alcohol and go back to whichever spare bedroom she was occupying that night. Study floors weren’t her ideal resting place, so she had not returned since the incident. They didn’t exactly do wonders for a woman’s pain relief, pregnant or otherwise. 

A day or two passed and little changed. The king and queen had still been holding one another at an arms length and then some, but still Persephone assumed her husband caught on that the baby was still alive and kicking - kicking a lot, brother, a whole damn lot. A lot of things, that man was, but oblivious was only one of the many when he wished it to be. It was blatantly obvious to any onlooker that she was expecting, even from a glance. Maybe he caught on that she had refrained from taking a swig from that bottle prior to it’s breaking, or maybe he came to his own conclusion instead. That she just hadn’t taken enough. Regardless of what she had or hadn’t done - the child was still there. Persephone was treated no differently as a result. Why would he need to? They’d be separated soon enough. Separated but still stuck together when autumn rolled around. Cooped up in a cage she’d locked herself in before she saw the world for what it was. 

The day that the riots began, Persephone couldn’t have told you that anything was on the brink of change. She had awoken in the early hours of the evening, and Hades had long since left for his workspace. His other workspace, the one he didn’t have to share with her. The one he could drag his sweet little songbird into if he ever felt the need for her. He used to call her his songbird too, when he’d first heard his melody sung on the waves of her voice. As newlyweds, they’d had plenty of names they gave one another. Maiden Kore’s transformation to Queen Persephone aside, endearing titles that would be tossed back and forth between the two were over-abundant. Songbird had stuck. Her voice was deeper, rougher than Eurydice’s, always was so even as a young girl, but he had adored it. She hadn’t sung - not any proper singing - as much as a note for a good long while, there was no need for it when their melody was forgotten, but in the old days it was hard to shut her up. He’d tease her about it on occasion, once or twice had given her that songbird claim in the heat of their bedroom when she got real damn loud. He loved her voice - in speech, in song and in screams - before sweet words turned bitter and flirts became fights. Of course, it could be that he had never truly liked her voice the way he claimed. He wanted a higher sound, a canary cry to fill the silence of the mines. Something that sounded as youthful as the vessel it rang from, and would be cursed to stay that way once his hands first lay themselves on the frozen, starved frame of another man’s fiancée. 

Persephone kept the curtains drawn as she tried to ignore the industrial din of Hadestown outside, frustratedly trying to fall back into her slumber once more. The heightened senses of her kind were not exactly welcomed at times like the present. The slightest of sounds from the close vicinity of the estate could reach her and they grated on her more than usual. Sleep in itself was far from a necessity for a divine being, but it was her only method of escapism that didn’t come in a bottle nor a syringe. She turned onto her side - not particularly comfortable a position at the time, but staying stationary her back grew boring. A few loose curls fell over her face, wild and yet to be tended to, and the goddess squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t tired, not in a sleep-needing way, but she’d rather rest than live. Her eyelids grew heavy. She felt a kick. Of course, now was a better time than any to jolt her awake. Hades’ baby, this one, undeniably. Not even born yet and already good at getting on her nerves. Sleep refrained to find her, not today. She was too aware of all that surrounded her. Of the wealthy sheets covering her body, high quality but paling comparatively to those in the master bedroom she had not in decades set foot within. Of the whirs and whistles signifying that the electric city was still alive with surges of power, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Of the voices of the workers beneath her, both literally, as their house loomed tall above the production lines, and in status. 

When she caught the beginnings of a conversation, she tried to ignore it. Two voices. How strange, her irate mind pondered, hoping to give it no more thought afterwards. But still, out in the open, workers rarely exchanged words at all. They didn’t tend to talk amongst themselves outside the walls of her speakeasy, especially not in small groups, let alone pairs. They had little to talk about anyhow, little in their memories to share with their fellow men, and that in itself acted also as a warning to keep their mouths shut where the king could see them - which was everywhere, as a matter of fact, down here. They knew better now. Even the most innocent of conversing would be suspected as plotting of a riot. Rebellion of the dead was messy. Had it been more than a pair talking, Persephone may have been concerned, may have listened in from where she lay just to ensure no uprising was in the works. She herself was a fighter, a fierce hellcat of a thing, but she was scarcely capable of protecting herself against the work-built muscles given the state that she was in. There wasn’t much that two could do, even now. 

One voice was soon recognised as Eurydice’s. She was talking, then, perhaps still trying to befriend somebody down here. Poor girl must still believe there’s any semblance of friendship available to her. When Eurydice’s voice, her lighter, more conventionally enjoyable voice, was identified by the older woman, she continued her persistent attempts to block the words out. She was probably running her mouth all across the underworld about what the king had done with her behind closed doors, and Persephone didn’t have an appetite for the details. She was still much too far away from the girl and whoever her mystery conversational partner was for individual words to be understood, but she was better safe than sorry. 

But, being the summer child that she was, birdsong was hard for Persephone to simply ignore. 

The goddess lay, pulling the covers over her head, but godly heightened senses did not bode well for her in the moment. Words alone she could not pick up upon, but tone was a different matter. And the girl, she sounded... happy. Joyful, ecstatic even. Persephone adjusted herself in the bed, propping herself up on her elbow and turning her head to the drawn curtains blocking the window. That was Eurydice, she was certain about that. The girl’s voice was burned into her mind for better or for worse. She’d heard Eurydice with Orpheus. Heard the love clinging to every inch of each spoken word. But that was a song so hopeful it was repulsively out of place in the mines. Especially coming from her, a girl who’s life had been stolen just to give one man the feeling of victory over his own wife. She wasn’t starving to death on her own lover’s doorstep anymore, no, but she couldn’t imagine Eurydice would be so overjoyed by her new job. Persephone had never heard the young woman so happy in any setting, with any person. Well, except with-

Oh. Oh, Fates, no. 

Persephone suddenly shot up as swiftly as she could, flinging the curtains open and praying to whoever able in her wretched bloodline to stop this that it wasn’t so. It wasn’t just the two owners of the voices outside. Plenty of ghosts were milling about, heads down and hammers swinging, but it wasn’t them she was interested in seeing. Her eyes found Eurydice’s familiar form quickly, corpse-like skin now far more visible thanks to the employee overalls and bandage binding she’d been redressed in. It was a smart move, though Persephone hated to admit it, that her husband had made with the shades’ uniforms. For the most part, it was damn near impossible to tell the sex of any soul. Stripping them further of their past identities - names forgotten, androgyny enforced - only kept them submissive. Eurydice fit the bill, all but her still loose hair identical to her fellow workers. Once she’d forgotten her name, she would be as unidentifiable as the others. That single exception aside, she was blending in splendidly. Exposed skin was stained with oil and coal dust. A scrape or two from the rocky interior of the mines. Thin body already filling out with muscles from the unrelenting factory jobs. But it wasn’t the sight of her that made Persephone’s stomach drop. Not this time. It was who’s arms she was held in. 

Orpheus. 

Persephone stood, still as a statue watching the young lovers. What in this hell’s name was happening? That mortal was here. It was plain to see. Had Orpheus died? Had the weather been so treacherous above, even with the monarchs causing the storms staying as far away from one another as possible, that that poor boy had been dragged down? Guilt twisted within the goddess, but... but no. No, no, that wasn’t it. He still looked very much alive, exactly how Persephone remembered him to be. Guitar on his back, carnation in his hand, adoring smile upon his face. She knew a shade when she saw one. Orpheus was still breathing, still living even if his lover was not. Besides, he would not have passed without his adoptive father figure - and her brother to boot - informing her. 

But, if that was the case, why was he here? How was he here? She couldn’t imagine the boy had gotten a ticket for the train. Had he..? Gods perish the thought, had he walked the road down?

Barely having processed the sight that lay before her, Persephone’s attention was grabbed by another addition to the almost unbelievable scene. A mortal had entered the realm of the dead alive, undoubtedly to retrieve his beloved from its grasp. There was a god standing in the way of that mission, a king nonetheless, and he chose now to make his presence known. It was quite a presence he had. You could always feel death approaching. That chill that frosted over your skin, that dread tugging at your throat. The boy clearly felt it in one fell swoop. Orpheus turned sharply, Eurydice stood back, Persephone’s gaze flitted beyond the couple. She was not the only one who had heard the mortals talking. Hades had soon entered the field, boasting the upper hand in terms as important as power to as minimal as height. Persephone, still frozen, watched as the mortal boy was approached by the king of the realm he had entered, the ruler of the land he was trespassing upon. How long her husband had been watching them, she couldn’t say, but he was always more intrigued in the souls conversing than she was. He had likely been aware of their presence before she even pinpointed Eurydice’s voice. 

Watching Hades begin to speak, catching some of that deep rumble in his voice, the queen was snapped back into herself. She turned from the window, pulling her unruly mass of curls into a hairnet and silently thanking herself for being too drained to exchange her normal dress for a nightgown the past evening. She made her way down the steep staircases as quickly as she could, flinging open the heavy front doors and dashing her way into the scene fast as her feet would carry her. 

“Hades!” Persephone began, and her husband’s head turned suddenly towards her. He had been looming over Orpheus even with the distance still between them, and the boy had an expression akin to a terrified lamb in the headlights. “I know this boy. Leave him be.”

“One of the unemployed,” Hades responded, brushing her off. “He’s not from around here. Trespassin’.”

“His name is Orpheus!” Persephone raised her voice, stepping forwards and, though still far from him, nearing Orpheus’ side. “He-“

“You stay outta this!”

Persephone opened her mouth to speak again, but Hades silenced her. Shut her up like always did. His eyes full of malice, his voice of disdain, for once indistinguishable in terms of who such disapproval was directed towards. He turned back to Orpheus, still several feet away from the boy. 

“You hear me son?” the king asked rhetorically, his volume heightening imposingly. “You’d better run while ya still can.”

Persephone thought that would be it. Orpheus was not a fighter, and Hades was ready to start one. She expected Orpheus to give Eurydice one last loving look before turning to leave, walking back the way he came. But that wasn’t what happened. The mortal straightened his back, standing up taller and ignoring the growing fear in Eurydice’s faded eyes. 

“Orpheus, you can’t-“

“I’m not going back there alone!” Orpheus finally spoke. He raised up his voice, put his still beating heart out on his sleeve as he challenged the king. “I came here for her. I came to take her home with me, I’m not leaving without her!”

Silence, momentarily. Persephone’s heart skipped a beat in her chest. She’d never seen another being stand up to her husband like that, with the exception of herself and likely her mama should she ever get the chance. Much less a being of (mostly) mortal descent. But his attempts were fruitless. Persephone knew the ways of the worlds, above and below. Orpheus was oblivious to both. As admirable as his attempts were, in trying to reclaim his stolen love, nothing could come of it. Nothing ever came of the songs people sang. Not under the iron fist of the king of shadows. 

Hades lowered his head with a sickening grimace, and for the briefest of seconds, Orpheus felt hope. Eurydice and Persephone, now they felt fear. They knew better than the boy. Fear accelerated as Hades started to laugh. A menacing, condescending kind of laugh, the sort of laugh that drained the confidence from the mortal musicians body. 

“Who the hell you think you are?” Hades asked amidst his laughter. “Who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to? You know where you are, boy?”

Hades approached Orpheus closed by just one step, but he might as well have had him backed into a corner with blades to his back. 

“You’re not from around here, son. You’d know better if you were,” the king grinned darkly, gesturing at the hell-city surrounding the small group as workers continued to file themselves into factories, into mines, in single file lines on their way towards the wall growing higher with each day. “You’re on my land, young man, my property. Everything and everyone in Hadestown, I own.”

Orpheus froze. He turned to Eurydice, who’s head was down. Keeping it low, like the fellow ghosts of her brothers and sisters. He was beginning to understand. 

“No... no, she’s not-“

“But I ain’t a thief,” Hades interrupted, shrugging Orpheus’ words off nonchalantly. “I only buy what others-“ the king gestured to his songbird, “choose to sell.”

Persephone watched the shame take hold of Eurydice’s soft expression, and the dread overcome Orpheus’. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand what she had done. 

“Still don’t get it, do ya?” Hades shook his head with that elitist grin still present, and Persephone wished she could do something. She hated being so powerless, being as helpless under his rule as the dead themselves. But there was nothing to be done. The contract had been signed, the canary had been killed. This was how the world was, and no amount of belief in how it could someday be would change a matter such as this. 

“She signed the deal herself. And now she-“ the king pointed a powerful hand to Eurydice, who now appeared to be on the verge of tears, regret truly setting in. “-belongs to me.”

“No...” Orpheus’ voice had dropped its prior certainty. He shook his head, turning to Eurydice and attempting to reach out to his love. “No, no, it isn’t true. Eurydice, what he said, it isn’t-“

“I did.” the girl raised her head only slightly, revealing eyes glassy with tears. “I do.”

“As for you...”

Hades raised his arms, calling the attention of the shades milling their ways to their respective jobs nearby. 

“Gather ‘round, my children!” the king’s authoritarian voice called out to his employees, who quickly turned their focuses towards him. They stood as best they could, their backs forever bent from eternal work and endless shifts. “Show this young man what becomes of trespassers with no respect for property!”

“Hades, no!” Persephone cried out, rushing towards her husband as the shades began to close in. Her words went ignored as always. 

Eurydice was lost in the crowds. Hades raised his head approvingly as he watched the shades circle Orpheus, turning as the first blow was landed against his cheek. Persephone only glanced back when she heard the mortal boy’s pained cry, watching in abject horror as he was pushed to the ground by deathly bodies unmistakably stronger than him. She wanted to help. Even if she were physically able, no action of her own could deter her husband’s command. She was powerless, and it was killing her more and more with every second that passed her down here. 

She watched as Hades began to retreat back towards his office. Away from the gruesome scene he had caused. Away from her. She would not allow this. That boy was her friend, he was her family in his own right. He had a gift to give, he had a girl to love. He was no different from her husband in any respect besides the colour their blood ran through their veins. She would not go ignored. Not this time, not with that boy’s heart at stake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter one this time around, I know, but I hope it was still enjoyable for you all!
> 
> Updates may be consistently more spaced out from now on, since what I have planned for the next few chapters will not be an easy write. I give my utmost thanks to those of you still reaching, I appreciate all the encouragement you give to me!


	9. How Long?

“How could you?”

The office door smacked against the wall as it was flung open, announcing Persephone’s arrival. Her husband’s back was faced towards her her, and he remained that same way even at the sound of her voice. He wanted to ignore her again. Pretend her existence was something he could block from his mind. Not this time. Never again. Certainly not with this drive behind her. 

“How could I what?” Hades spoke, his voice cold and uncaring as the steel which guilted his heart. Did he really see no issue with... any of this? Did the consequences of his actions upon those below him, the suffering of the many, truly mean so little? He had not always been this way, had he? Surely, she had not married a man like this. 

“He’s just a boy in love!” Persephone exclaimed, feeling a jab in her chest as she overheard her husband’s disgusted sigh. “The hell gives you the right?”

“Have a drink, why don’t’cha?” 

Waving his woman off, Hades moved towards the large office window to oversee the brawl beneath them. Orpheus was being well beaten down. He didn’t stand a chance, the poor boy. Nobody did down there.

Persephone’s breath caught in her throat, her mouth hung silently open for a split second before it was swiftly snapped shut. Oh. So, he was doing this, was he? Returning to his old ways, his old argumentative methods and digging at her addictions. Not a new dig by far, but a new light illuminated it now. Giving consideration to that noteworthy night several days ago, a darker undertone held to that particular verbal stab. ‘Go try to kill our child again,’ he was telling her, ‘get rid of what’s left in you of me, maybe this time you’ll succeed.’

Persephone folded her arms defensively across her chest, shaking her head and trying to will her husband to just turn around. How hard was it for a man to just look at his wife?

“No. I’ve had enough.” 

Persephone could swear that she saw Hades tense. She had each mannerism memorised. Sober, she knew less of how to rile him up, but that was not what she was here for. She didn’t want to get on his nerves. She didn’t want a screaming match. If it became necessary, then fine, that would be that, but she was here with a purpose. 

No longer was she just fighting to fight or retreading old ground. This was new, and this was important. Not to say that past fights were all over meaningless matters, of course, but this, brother. This was different. Orpheus was family to her, more so than anyone in their bloodline bar her mama and Hermes had ever been. He was family, and she knew exactly the pain he felt. To be trapped in another world, separated from the one you love more than anything with nothing to be done to stop it; a rule imposed by some authoritarian figure who cared for nobody but himself. She knew that heartache from first hand experience. 

She watched the king, the vessel of what had once been a man as blinded by love as poor Orpheus. Maybe if she looked hard enough, she could finally drill through those concrete emotional barriers. He stayed silent and went still. Perhaps a little too still. His back remained turned to her. 

“He loves that girl, Hades.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“He loves that girl the way you used’ta love me.”

A heavy quiet befell the office, each god waiting for the other to make the next move. He still wouldn’t look at her. Did he still think he could get rid of her this easily? By just pretending she didn’t exist, ignoring her until she signed her ring away and left this hellhole for the six-month summer that would announce their union’s end. Persephone wouldn’t stand and take it. She wouldn’t retreat into her den and succumb to desperate needs for substance. Not this time

“Gods sakes, Hades, look at me!”

Hades, unusually, complied at the sound of his wife’s raised voice. Persephone found herself gritting her teeth, her gaze meeting the king’s as he turned from his window. The distance between them might as well have been tangible, a real and solid wall between them to rival the towering bricks surrounding his city. Their city. She had just as much of a claim to this place as he did, Persephone reminded herself, and no matter what he tried to pull in a play of power would change that. Half hers, this kingdom, even if it’s resemblance did nothing to signify it. 

“What do you want?” 

Such a simple question, but Hades managed to make it sound detestable. So condescending, so belittling to his own wife. She was supposed to be his equal. That was what they had both agreed to upon marriage, wasn’t it? Or was equality a condition she had to earn through calm compliance to his ways? Was that why he wouldn’t even give her the luxury of being called by her own damn name?

“I don’t want nothin’,” she continued, keeping her arms firmly crossed. “I’m tellin’ you to let her go. Let both of ‘em go.”

“The girl signed the deal herself. Ain’t no changin’ it.”

“Don’t you dare give me that,” the goddess snarled “You stole her away before her time was up, you know that damn well. And for what? All this to go ya brother’s route and shut me up? That what you wanted?”

Momentary silence. The pause in argument weighed heavy, and Persephone noted the tension in her face partnering that in the king’s frame.

“The girl means nothing to me.” Hades grumbled. 

“I know. But she means everything to him.”

Persephone could almost hear her husband roll his eyes. He turned to one of his large bookcases, choosing to focus on them rather than give his eyes the displeasure of viewing the woman he had tried and almost succeeded to break. That’s what Persephone assumed, at least. Neither monarch noticed the fight outside dying down. The sounds of Hadestown all were accustomed to drawing to an eerie halt.

“So? What does that boy-“

“They got names! His name is Orpheus, her name is Eurydice. My name is Persephone! Would it kill ya to say it every once in a while? Gods above, Hades, what are you so afraid of?” Persephone asked, exasperated, taking a step closer to him and gesturing towards the window. “He’s just a boy!”

“Show one man mercy and the kingdom falls,” he responded dryly, because damn, it all had to be about politics, didn’t it? Everything he did was motivated by means like this. All kingdom and rulings and staying above his subjects. Superiority was his drive. It would have been so easy to snap at him that second. To fall back into a comfortable old routine of fighting, a long since learned dance of argument that wasn’t done to win or solve an issue, rather to shout and shout and tear each other to shreds. A dance known better than those they used to do in each other’s arms. A strengthened willpower was serving her well. Last year’s Persephone would have thrown up her hands in frustration, barked out something she’d later regret and make a beeline for the speakeasy.

“What does he care for any’a that?” Persephone was quick to challenge. “I know that boy, he ain’t got one bad bone in his body. He don’t care for your laws, he sings for love.”

She paused momentarily. Hades kept his composure. Damn him. 

“He ain’t no different to you. Back in the garden ‘fore there was anythin’ between us. You ain’t had nothin’ but a song and a promise for the woman ya loved.”

Persephone took another step closer to her husband, even though her feet were killing her from the ground up. It pained her to recall that day now. There was a time she could still recall, long gone in the cycle of the earth, so very long ago, where those memories would keep her going through the drags of summer months. Back when she’d still leap into his arms when he arrived to take her home - on time, not early and certainly not late - and when hours now filled by fighting would be spent reminding one another of that flame of love, keeping it burning as bright as the day they met. The day they married too. Now, they served only to haunt her with the memory of what she had lost. She wondered if they’d ever haunted Hades the same. 

“And the realms were against us, but we found our way because we were in love. We didn’t care about what some king said was true. We didn’t let fate keep us apart. Even when we were a damn world away from each other, we still kept soldierin’ on because were still in love. Those mortals ain’t no different. Orpheus is just like you, Hades, why ain’t you willin’ to see that? Ain’t you got any pity left?”

Hades finally turned his gaze back to settle on her, looking her up and down and his eyes notably - from Persephone’s perspective, at least - skimming as quickly over her stomach as they could. 

“You and your pity,” Hades retorted in a loathing breath. “You and your pity for those people doesn’t fit in my bed.”

His words were so quiet, but so dreadfully cutting all the same. It felt like a spear through Persephone’s chest. Remarkable, really, how he could cut her with the same blade time and time again and the pain always ceased to dull. How he could restate what she already knew was the case and twist her mind in a new way with each spoken sentence. But she wouldn’t kneel. She wouldn’t beg for mercy, nor would she back away from the fight. This was bigger than the two of them and the final threads of their marriage. In Persephone’s eyes, it was.

“So be it, then.” Persephone stated with a forced firmness that she hoped her husband wouldn’t see through. “I ain’t fit in your bed for decades. Hell, maybe I never did. But this ain’t about me. I don’t care if you don’t give a damn ‘bout me no more, just let Eurydice go. Find yourself another little songbird to fill my space, let a boy have his love.”

Her voice wavered on those final words, and Hades clenched his iron jaw.

“How long you gonna keep this up?” the king asked, not intending to receive an answer, with a chip of that authoritarian confidence knocked away from his voice. 

“As long as I am your wife.”

Persephone took a step forwards. Then another. Her and Hades were close enough to touch, should they want to. Persephone didn’t know if she ever stopped wanting to. She pushed herself to look up at him, meeting those dark, empowered eyes with her own. She clenched her fists, standing her ground in a way she hadn’t done since drinking became her life’s only light. Hades held his gaze, eye contact between the two unwavering, and each examined every inch of their spouse’s face in the fleeting second of silence. Persephone noticed the darkness beneath her husband’s eyes, the tension tugging at his brow more than normal. Hades took in the faded colour of his wife’s usually golden skin, how winter had drained the bronze from her body. Gods, how far they had fallen. 

“As long as the earth dies, and as long as it’s reborn.”

Persephone expected Hades to push past her, try and relocate himself to throw her off his scent, and for once she was ready to give chase. But he defied her expectations. Another first in a long while. He just stood there, staring at her silent as natural death with an indecipherable expression. 

“As long as a part of me stays down here. That’s how damn long.”

Persephone kept her head raised and tried to find any hint of weakness in her husband’s demeanour. There was a lot of meaning in those words. If - when - the rings were off the both of their hands, she would still remain here for her allotted six months. Only then would she be able to give the world the length of sunny months it deserved, would the winter storms finally back down and show mercy, and it could be that such a sacrifice should have been made long ago. She was inescapable, as was he. But it wouldn’t just be her. It never would be again. Hades was soon to be a father, and Persephone a mother. No matter what he believed she had done, or vice versa, there would soon be a baby of their combined godly blood born. His firstborn, his heir, was coming from her womb, and this child was another inescapable truth. She knew that. He did too. 

Hades opened his mouth to speak - what he would say, even he was unsure of - but a metallic crash from outside broke the eye contact between the pair. It was not the usual sounds of Hadestown. It was not the expected heavy metal melody that rang throughout the city of souls. There was an aggression behind it; an aggression soon followed by protesting shouts. Shouts and crashes that made Persephone realise just how unsettlingly silent the kingdom had been for far, far too long. No hammer swings, to pickaxe ringing, no chants of slaving souls. A silence contrasting the sudden aggression that made Persephone’s blood run cold. 

She knew what this was. 

“What’s that noise?” Hades muttered under his breath, but it was an answer neither one of them needed to hear. 

Both rushed to the window, taking in the landscape below. The workers were standing. Standing upright, heads raised high and voices raised louder. Among them, beaten, bloody and betrayed, stood Orpheus; at his side, Eurydice, hand in hand with her love, both speaking words Persephone could not make out over the shades. She looked to the king, seeing that same fear somewhere deep behind his eyes. 

“The boy-!” Hades began, but didn’t finish, turning to exit the office with Persephone hot on his heels. She didn’t know why she followed. She wanted to protect Orpheus, but he hardly needed it now. There wasn’t much Hades, the god he was, could do to quell this. 

God, muse or mortal, a riot is a riot.


	10. Chant (reprise)

The searing heat of the foundries below had started to die down as Persephone found herself back out in the industrial landscape. Given any other circumstance, she would have been satisfied to sit back and watch the kingdom fall to its knees. Her satisfaction would be fleeting, of course, before she returned to that ever-repeating “drink until the guilt goes away” cycle of hers. The workers assigned to keep the fire burning had abandoned their stations, the air cooling around the monarchs. They’d given up their work. Everybody had. Lights, while still on, appeared unsteady, bulbs ready to blow and electricity left unchecked. Factories silent and bricks abandoned, the lack of shades attending to all of the obvious dangers in the city was an injury waiting to happen. Hades liked to think he ran the most powerful realm in all of the cosmos and whatever lay beyond it. To his credit, it would seem to be that way from the eyes of those who didn’t live half a life down here the way she did. Persephone saw just enough to magnify the flaws, but not so much that she forgot the ways to fix it. In reality, the king oversaw a fragile kingdom. It may have taken centuries for things to get this far, but one boy was all it had needed all along. Even the enforcements of steel can be worn down, and any regime will fall apart when the mistreated essentials finally have enough. Physical danger was always around every corner in Hadestown. But damn it all brother, in that moment? In that moment, distant danger was the last thing on Persephone’s mind. For the first time, quite possibly in her time on this earth, started with a sheltering mother and continued with a possessive husband, Persephone was fearing for her life. 

She felt vulnerable. She never felt vulnerable. The Bringer of Death herself was always a hell of a fighter, but this? This was a fight she would not win, even without her current physical impairment being taken into account. She was more of a hands-on kind of girl. Her godly abilities were scarcely utilised in a physical altercation for one reason or another, and thus, she was dreadfully out of practice. Even so, what would they do? None of her powers leant themselves well to combatting a riot - transfiguration didn’t work fast enough, and hell, that was about it without the active presence of nature - and certainly not one of this caliber. It had never been this extreme before, the rebellions, never this widespread. Each past attempt at uprising had been a failure. Not every shade had raised their head, and those who did were taken care of with a mere wave of the king’s hand, washed away fast and forgotten by all even faster. Never before had all of the kingdom’s subjects dropped their tools so unanimously. Never before had they gotten that final push from a fellow man who saw the world so differently. Orpheus had a way with words; he could make anyone see the way the world could be in spite of the way that it was. And damn it all, if he had made them see. They had seen as they had never seen since death had crept upon them. They had stood with the boy, in all of his burning sorrow, and the queen could sense in their voices that they could and would topple an empire to win back their freedom. 

The gods were stood on the balcony outstretching from Hades’ office, utilised for him to supervise his workforce from afar. The balcony had a set of stairs on either side, it wouldn’t be much longer before they were flooded with angry shades. Persephone noticed just how tightly her husband was gripping the railing, his knuckles paler than what was normal for him. Her eyes darted towards his face, hoping to find solace in that if nothing else. This man knew what to do, didn’t he? He’d commanded every facet of this kingdom’s creation, he could not simply stand and stare as it was brought down to little more than dust and ashes. But she could see that confidence waver, and it made her tension rise. 

“Young man!”

Orpheus’ head jerked upwards at the sound of the king’s voice, turning to both gods above the crowd gathered around him. Several workers backed down, stepping away from the boy with tails between their legs as that well-instilled fear flooded back. Not everyone had risen above the mindset an eternity of work had driven into them. Others, on the contrary, appeared to be nothing but empowered by their lord’s presence. Eurydice, fists clenched tensely around her hammer, moved forwards to her lover’s side, and many ghosts followed suit. Workers raised their fists in protest, cries and declarations of injustice trying to drown Hades out. 

“Got to hand it to ya, son, you don’t scare easy.”

A light from above fell loose, landing with a shattering crash of sparks and glass somewhere in the distance. Persephone’s eyes were firmly focused on Orpheus, now behind a row of workers screaming their demands for freedom that fell upon deaf ears. Her heart tugged painfully, seeing the fear in his eyes while Hades stalked along the balcony like a cat hunting its prey. He was still speaking, but the goddess took in not a word. Orpheus didn’t want to start an uprising. The poor boy just wanted his wife. The same way Hades had wanted her all those years ago. 

“Singin’ your song ain’t gonna win her back, boy. Take it from a man no longer young. Women come and women go..”

It could have been her motherly instincts and their convenient timing, or maybe it was just the years she had watched that boy grow up. Maybe it was how she knew he couldn’t defend himself to literally save his life or maybe even just how much his unwavering optimism could keep her going through her tougher nights spent at the bar. But when Persephone saw Hades approaching the staircase nearest to his side, her fears for her own safety faded with a snap of her fingers. She wanted to protect Orpheus. She needed to. 

She moved as quickly as she could, darting down her set of stairs just in time as a trio of female workers swung their pickaxes against the wall of the building holding the balcony upright. Others were doing the same, but rather with factories and, of course, the infamous wall. Horrendous metal crashes filled the air, but they did not deter Persephone. Not this time. The goddess gripped the banister of the staircase shook with the impact, rapidly stepping off and rushing towards the rioting crowd. Her tracks were interrupted by her husband’s employees, their tall, muscular frames blocking her path. Now, Persephone never took the time to find out how exactly the memory loss down in the mines worked itself. The bliss of ignorance spared her at least some pain. As a result, however, she was unable to tell if her nights spent trying to remedy their pains in her speakeasy meant anything now. Hell, even if they did remember, that was not enough - in her eyes - to spare her this. She could have freed them if she really, really wanted to, couldn’t she? She was always just too drunk and drugged up to take the responsibility upon herself. She supposed that she had always known this would happen, someday, that they’d have enough of her sorry excuses for help and make sure she knew it. At long last, the power had shifted, and Persephone only managed to stand her ground out of intense fear freezing her body still. 

A surge of electricity danced across overhanging power lines as Persephone heard her husband’s voice raise. Drawing nearer, though she couldn’t see him. She could hear him damn well though. 

“Brave man or a stupid man you are, son,” Hades’ voice commanded power on every breath. He knew that, always had known, and he knew the terror it could instill even more. The presence of the king so close brought the majority of the shades’ heads back down low and held them there, backing away entirely or keeping a safe distance away. She couldn’t blame them. This was all they had known for eons. This, in turn, formed a clearing around Orpheus, clearly their lord’s target.

“Ain’t none’a that gonna save one bit’a ya.”

Another power surge illuminated Hades, sparks swirling through the air for little more than a millisecond as if it was his own brother’s lightning. Persephone caught a glimpse of Orpheus, backed against a sea of workers who’s confidence and rage had vanished as quickly as the flying strands of electricity. She saw her husband approaching him, saw the look in his eyes, heard the words he was shouting down at the smaller man, and a force within her pushed her body to finally move. Everything had happened in a matter of seconds, really, but time can be such a strange thing to one so supremely aware of its passing. 

She broke through the wall of workers blocking her way, pushed through those who did not clear the way for her, and without much thought at all, flung her body in front of Orpheus. Hades would stoop to plenty of lows, but never would he dare lay a violent finger on her. The lord had been halfway through some other booming threat when her presence interrupted. He looked at her with rage, annoyance at the very least, and Persephone suddenly became aware of how quickly she was breathing. Her eyes never left the king’s. 

“Don’t you touch him!” Persephone insisted. “He ain’t done nothin’ wrong, Hades, he-“

With an inaudible groan only she could sense, Hades pushed his wife aside into the crowd, who had grown far quieter than before, just staring on at the unfolding scene. The shove wasn’t hard enough to hurt, of course; even in their worst moments, the two never became physical with one another. It was just to get her out of the way, real directly this time, so that he could... gods above, what was he planning to do? Persephone immediately went to take a step forward, to refind her place protecting that boy, but a smaller hand gripping her own stopped her in her tracks. The goddess turned, and Eurydice looked back with more common sense than Persephone could presently boast. She was not in a position to be able to protect. The fear was undeniable upon Eurydice’s face, and the goddess gripped her hand in an attempt of comfort was she spotted such emotion. While she never blamed the girl for what may or may not have happened behind closed doors, all thoughts of it vanished in that moment. Both women gripped each other’s hands in their own, goddess and mortal watching their respective partner’s and feeling the utmost guilt for not doing anything beyond that much, even if it would end in a grizzly manner regardless. 

“You made a strong impression down here, son, I’ll give ya that much. Tell ya what-“ Hades raised his hands. “-since my wife is such a fan’a yours, I’ll let you give us one more song. One lady blaze of glory ‘fore I put you outta your misery.”

Orpheus was shaking, his pale face even whiter than usual. Eurydice’s grip suddenly tightened around Persephone’s hand. She didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this. Neither of these poor mortals did. were just two children, really, young and in love and reckless the way Persephone vaguely once remembered being. 

“Sing, boy! Make an old man feel young again!” the king demanded, taking a step back and leaning against his proudly standing wall. 

With a trembling pair of hands, Orpheus positioned his guitar as Hades wasted on in anticipation. Eurydice held onto Persephone tighter, as if she may become the mother she had run from along her way to escape the weather, and the goddess protested nothing. 

Slowly, Orpheus began to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this chapter taking so long! I have been very busy recently with some separate projects so this took longer than I anticipated. The next chapter will be out soon, I promise this time for real!


	11. Epic III

Long ago, there was a girl in a garden. 

She was sat alone, eyes closed and honey skin soaking in the sun’s brilliant light. To her side sat a bunch of flowers she had gathered, petals of every shade beneath the sun. Such was a rare moment of solitude for the girl, triumphantly won after a good ten minutes of convincing her mama that no, she will not be killed by some unknown beast as soon as she was out of her sight. She had traversed the vast expanses of the gardens, retreating as far from the view of mama’s as she could get before letting herself relax. She loved her mother, she really truly did, but her sheltering was overwhelming more often than not. This girl wasn’t really a girl anymore. She was a woman grown, but she certainly didn’t look the part. Well, physically she did, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. Mama kept her looking childish, covering her up nice and proper so onlookers from Olympus wouldn’t get any ideas. The girl couldn’t even recall when she had last seen a man that was not her father. Even then, it had been years since she’d even heard his name spoken. Mama was just protecting her. She was doing what was best for her, that’s what she had always been told. But was this all that was left for her? Would she forever be kept a child? Eternally stuck in the nest with no way to fly? It was a strange place to be in, with an ache for freedom growing but without the knowledge of the world to know what to do to attain such a goal. For now, however, this was enough. A moment alone of peace to feel like her own woman rather than her mother’s daughter.

-

Eons later, there was a woman in hell. 

She stood in a new kind of cage with a different watchful eye. This was a roomier place to be trapped. She could stretch her wings now, maybe flap them a little every six months or so, but it was a cage nonetheless. The sun she had once revelled in had been replaced with a crude, artificial imitation, designed by a man who refused to see natural light for more than a minute every year. Her eyes were open now. She liked to have them closed before this year, before she had something beyond herself to battle for, because there was an undeniable comfort in ignorance. Her husband agreed with her on that if nothing else. Down in his kingdom, she was not the one being watched. Not anymore. From a mother’s unwavering gaze to a husband’s wilful ignorance to how she suffered. He used to be at her side every second he could be during their limited amount of time together, until the distance between them grew further and further with every train journey up and down. His attention was reserved for his workforce now, and she’d lock herself away somewhere to push her own limits until the barriers broke. She was never alone in this realm, despite what she so frequently felt. It was easy to isolate oneself behind the walls, but there would always be a plethora of ghosts right around any given corner. She was never alone in the literal sense, but dead without identity or memory does not make for good company. A bottle or a needle would have had to suffice for her throughout at least six months every year. And they did, more often than not, before the specific circumstances forbidding it this time under the earth. She wasn’t picky.

-

The girl tilted her face upwards to the sunlight, sighing in satisfaction as the warmth overcame her. Her hands rested back, fingers combing through the lush grass beneath her. She adored the earth above and all it had to offer, but she always supposed that she could love it more. It was never her earth, no matter what mama said, she never really did much for it. She wasn’t allowed to. She could grow things, sure, she could make the sun shine and the fruit ripen, but mama always did more. She got all the credit, too, and the girl tried to avoid letting it get to her as much as she knew it did, deep down inside. It must be nice to get worship. She would’ve liked to receive some of her own some day. Her dark curls fell against her back, only reaching just below her shoulders. She’d always wanted to grow it out, but mama said it would be impractical for her work in the fields. She didn’t mind the work. It was relaxing, it was a chance to try and talk to mama like the adult she was rather than the child she kept her as given that she was too focused on her grains to correct her speech. But this was nice too. The gentle breeze, the shining sun, the birdsong surrounding her. The birds were one of her favourites. On occasion, she would sing along with them, and on others she would simply bask in their beautiful melodies. 

-

The woman raised her head. Not in superiority. She never wanted that part of power. She raised her head and swallowed hard, gripping Eurydice’s hand tightly in her own as she watched Orpheus play in pre-emptive grief. When did things get this bad? When did her husband, their marriage, get this bad? Which of their many missteps had justified him in stealing a young girl’s life away to feel like he’d won in their battles, which made him feel like he could end another when that girl’s love came to her rescue? And the poor boy was not even gifted the luxury of a dignified death. No, instead he was made to stand before his failed riot attempt and use his gods-given gift to appease the cruel king one last time. The woman couldn’t stand to listen; hearing that man’s name on the boy’s lips stung her something awful. She always loved music, from the chirps of birds to the strum of a lyre; but this hurt. Every beautiful note was a knife in her chest, was fuel to her guilty fire. 

-

The girl slid her dress down, giving the skies a nice flash of shoulders and collarbones, which was still an amount of skin her mama deemed scandalous. It was inappropriate for her age, she’d say, as if she was still a child that needed the protection her motherly shelter of a wingspan provided her for years. Mama would tell her to cover up. Tell her she’d catch the attention of the wrong people; in mama’s eyes, all people were the wrong people. Well, mama wasn’t here. Nobody else was either, to her knowledge, but... well, if anyone did show up, she’d give them a nice sight to see. The thought excited the girl a little, of receiving attention her mother had deemed as forbidden for her sweet, precious baby. She grinned to herself and pushed her dress down a centimetre or so further, letting the sun hit just the swell at the top of her breasts. She was a grown woman, she reminded herself, a grown woman in what was half her own gardens. She could show however much skin she pleased, thank you very much. 

The golden brown of her skin shone with excellence this time of year; not that there were any other times. Not yet. With two nature goddesses on earth - though you wouldn’t know it to look how the mortals worshipped, you’d never guess Demeter had a second-in-command, let alone a daughter - the season eventually labelled as summer was a powerful thing all year round, and the mortals seemed to enjoy it as did the gods. Even with the sun beating down, the plants grew lush and the fruits stayed ripe. Of course, though, mama got all the credit. She was used to it now. She slowly laid back, sighing contentedly as the weight of her small frame was cushioned by a bed of grass and flowers. For a moment, she may well have fallen asleep there, but a sudden, strikingly unfamiliar sound jolted the girl from her peace. A deep sound. A voice.

“Come home with me.”

She bolted upright, her head snapping towards the direction the voice had came from. Her eyes identified a figure, a man, slowly stepping out of the trees. Notably, he kept himself in the shadows cast by the branches above. Uncharacteristically, she found herself momentarily frozen by her sudden fear before pulling her dress back up to cover her shoulders with a swiftness perfected after many times she was almost caught by mama. So much for all that excitement for mysterious attention, The woman who was always warning her about strangers. Men especially. How they were dangerous. How they’d kidnap her and she’d never see the sun again. She had never assumed that mama’s warnings would ever be proven correct, but alas. Here was some stranger, trespassing on her land, telling - not asking, telling - her to come home - wherever his home was - with him. 

“Who are you?” the girl snapped when she found her words, standing and stepping further away from this mystery man than she already was. 

She gave him a quick look over, her eyes scanning the form of the trespasser. His attire was far from what she knew. Her clothes were handmade by her mother, favouring practicality over any kind of fashion. Now this man, a god, she could recognise in his presence, he was a very different story; wealth was practically shining from him, albeit subtly. Her gaze darted back upwards to meet his eyes for what would be the first of many times to come, and she found that he had not stopped staring at her since she stood up from where she lay. There was something in his deep, dark eyes that she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t know what it was, she didn’t know if it scared her or not. She wanted to do something, but she didn’t know what. Did she want to run back to mama? Did she want to assert herself and tell this whoever-he-was to run back to wherever he came from?

She didn’t move.  
-

The woman gripped onto the mortal girl’s hand like a vice as the muse boy’s voice rang out like the songbird his lover had become. Her stomach dropped, her jaw clenched, when she truly heard the words floating in that delightful, pitiful sound. 

“King of shadows, king of shades.”

She turned to her husband - who did not return the favour - and she found him still to be unreadable, just staring on as the boy played like a predator waiting for its prey to collapse. Fates, gods, mother, father. In the name of anyone listening, what had he reduced this boy to? Outright stating his death would follow this little show yet still somehow driving him to play his beautiful music in the lord’s honour. 

“Hades was king of the underworld.”

She didn’t look at the girl stood beside her. She didn’t want to see. Imagining the look on the mortal’s hungry little face wrenched her heart even more. The shades had all fallen completely silent, the riot dead as each of them. The king raised an eyebrow, a prideful grimace, a repulsively condescending look, took hold of his face. 

“Oh, it’s about me.” he muttered. 

That was it. The final straw that broke her already aching back. She could not stand here and bear witness to this horror show before her eyes, she could not see Orpheus try to appease her husband’s pride before he was struck down as his lover had been at the same man’s hand. She dropped the young girl’s hand and turned on her heels, the ghosts behind them wordlessly parting to make way for their queen. She started to walk with no route in mind, but she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to go back to her old ways. She wanted to run and hide and drink and no thought even somewhat occurred to her in that moment about the baby still kicking inside her. She wanted to forget about all of this, forget she’d ever even met the man she had called her lover in a time long passed.

She didn’t move.

-

She stood staring at the intruder, oddly transfixed on his face and his eyes and his everything, really, as she awaited his response. He appeared to be older than her. He was closer to her mama’s age, seemingly, his black hair scattered with faint grey strands with his face defined by lines of age. Had she ever examined someone else this closely before? Surely she hadn’t in such a short span of time. He either took his sweet time formulating an answer or she was just supremely entranced by this man’s allure - perhaps it was both - but when he did speak, more questions were raised for the girl than there were answered. A mystery, this circumstance was. 

“The man who’s gonna marry you.”

“I’m sorry?”

She had to laugh. Really, she did. Shock of that kind didn’t have any set yes or no’s with reactions, so it could hardly be blamed. Was he serious? He couldn’t be. A god like him - clearly a status higher than her own - had options. Potentially even had a wife already. She wasn’t up for becoming a side piece to whoever this visitor was, no matter how much money he had stored away somewhere to afford fancy things. She’d seen how that turned out on her father’s side, and it sure as hell wasn’t pretty. 

“Does the man who’s gonna marry me wanna tell me his name?” she retorted, eyebrow raised and arms folded. 

Her proposer didn’t speak this time. The girl rolled her eyes, stepping closer to the god still stood in the shadows. 

“You hear me? I’m aski-“

“Hades.”

A chill shot through the girl, travelling down her spine. The woman felt much the same, regardless of how the heat sources and cooled. 

-

“But he fell in love with a beautiful lady, who walked up above in her mother’s green fields.”

Her feet stopped without her intending for them to do so. She could hear her heartbeat stop, even if just for a second, and her breath hitches in her throat on its way to her lungs. What she felt might have been shock. It might have been outrage. This wasn’t a song about her husband, no, this was a song about them. About their marriage, what they had once been. This boy was doomed. The woman didn’t turn, remaining stood as still as she had been when he had first made his existence known to her. 

-

“Mama warned me about you.”

Hades just chuckled. She felt as though that should have annoyed her. Strangely enough, it didn’t. 

“How long you been here? Hidin’ away in the shadows. Ain’t very becomin’ of ya, watchin’ me for who knows how long.” 

“Hard not to watch a woman so beautiful.”

She suppressed a scowl as another feeling she deemed as personally unjustified stirred within her. Butterflies, really? If any other god - or goddess, for that matter, but she’d never been well acquainted with many of them - said this to her, she’d let them have it. What was he doing differently?

“And how many girls you said that to today? How am I supposed to know I ain’t gettin’ another Hera-type deal offered to me, your highness, huh?”

“You’re the first in centuries.”

A snide remark was at the tip of her tongue, but the look in his eyes made the girl feel inclined to believe him. 

“Come into the light. Let me see ya.”

The man obeyed. He squinted in the sunlight, covering his eyes with his hand. By virtue of his underground lifestyle, the girl assumed, sunlight wasn’t something he was very well acquainted with. She could get a better look at him now. A tall man, he was, taller than her father from what she vaguely remembered of him. Handsome too, more so now that he wasn’t obscured by his favoured shadows. 

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he responded.

Real wordsmiths, those two.

“Mama won’t be happy if she sees ya.”

The girl tried to analyse this man’s strange expression. That wasn’t a skill she had acquired just yet. She’d pick it but further down the road she was yet to traverse. Even so, the glint in his eyes told her that he didn’t really care too much about what her mother thought. She didn’t either. 

“I’m Kore.”

“Maiden?” the fellow god raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, your majesty,” the girl retorted in an attempt to be condescending, “we can’t all be underworld royalty.”

“You could be.” 

“What do you-“

Hades was suddenly much closer than she had recalled him being. When did he get this close? Had she noticed? Had she cared to? Did she perhaps move towards him instead? And when did he start holding her hands? His were big enough to hold both of hers in one of his own. They felt secure there, safe. A different sort of safe than what she was with mama. 

-

“He fell in love with Persephone, who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun.”

The woman in question felt her eyes start to sting. Those memories were fading in from a hazy mist. Memories of the day she had met the man that became her husband and married him within the hour. Of genuine sunlight and genuine love between the gods. Something gripped at her heart. She felt eyes upon her, more than just a pair, but even amongst every gaze she could feel her husband’s burning into the back of her head more than ever. 

She turned, finally. Not her full body, just her head, and she saw her husband’s face. A mix of shock and outrage befell his expression as their eyes met, and everything in her mind started to become a great deal more vivid. The rock beneath her feel felt both too solid yet still as if it may give way underneath her any given second. Her eyes never left her husband’s. His never left hers. 

-

Kore had said yes to the king’s proposal that day in the garden. When it was love struck her was hard to say. He just felt... right. It felt right in his arms, under his gaze. His ring fit well on her finger and his lips felt soft against her own, they fit so well together they might as well have been designed that way. He was her first everything; she didn’t say that, but with a name like the one she’d been settled with she could assume that he knew anyway. They’d sealed their marriage then and there, their arms were around each other as soon as the metal was adorning her delicate hand, he’d made a real honest woman of her before the sun had vanished beyond the horizon. He was good to her then. She wouldn’t have taken him for a careful man - most of his kind would have taken what they wanted and left her without a care for her satisfaction at all - but he was real gentle until she assured him she could take all he could give. That’s what she’d wed into, wasn’t it? Taking what he would give her. A ring on her finger meant a kingdom half her own. A throne beside his and judgements to be passed side by side. Before she knew better, she believed this marriage would hide her from the sun for the rest of time; she would make that sacrifice. She wanted to. She wanted to go down into his dark mystery world mama warned her about as soon as their marriage was set in stone. Before she’d even caught her breath, fingers still tracing the fading scars and firm muscles of her newly wed husband’s body, she was ready to leave for good. 

Kore’s eyes had met his, and all thoughts and words escaped her. Both gods might as well have forgotten how to speak, just sitting and staring almost obsessively at their new spouse until they fell back into endless kisses. They could scarcely stand to be apart after they had gotten a taste of being together. Hades’ arms tightened around her smaller body like he was holding the world itself. Their hearts beat in unison, Kore resting her head against one of Hades’ broad shoulders when their lips finally parted ways once more. 

There were no words for the way that Hades felt. He had never, never in his centuries of life, had he felt so strongly for any being, mortal or divine. But this woman - this woman had changed him for the better. A permanent change, surely. He wanted to express as much to his wife, his beautiful, feisty, outspoken little wife, but Fates, he was out of practice. There were no words for the way that he felt. So he opened his mouth, and he started to sing. 

-

“La la la la la la la...”

-

Persephone’s eyes fell wide, a small gasp escaping her agape mouth which her hand slowly flew up to cover. The underworld crumbled away before her, all thoughts of capitalism and walls and factories turning to dust in its wake, and she was back in the garden again. Back before the power lines surging with unnatural electricity and lights ready to burst with power. Back in the sunlight of her mother’s garden when she was only a girl and Hades only a man. Before power had driven them apart. Before doubt had come in. Before she realised that love was sometimes not enough. 

“Where’d you get that melody?”

Through tear-blurred eyes, the queen returned her gaze to the king. His shock was apparent - not so much as her own, but very much there - and his voice was no longer the imposing boom he favoured more often than not. Orpheus didn’t falter. He kept his eyes on his guitar, meticulous with every note he played. Hades took a step towards him. Persephone raised a hand to signal against it. 

“Let him finish, Hades.”

And for once, he listened. 

Hades and Persephone listened as Orpheus retold the story of a love long lost, all that was beyond this boy and his song fading into nothingness. They were closer, physically in terms of distance, with each verse the half muse sang. Hades was practiced with restrained emotion, and he put such practice to good use when not one tear was shed even as the entire underworld joined together in a symphony. Their melody had never once been uttered by any creature besides them before, and Persephone was overwhelmed. Blame it on the hormones. She wasn’t crying, per say, but tears were falling from her earthy dark eyes and refilling them just as quickly. Worker voices singing the song of love Hades had sang to her in their wedding bed of grass and flowers, surrounded by overarching trees and wild birds filling the sunset sky, like they’d known it all along. Proclaiming the song of godly love that made the world go around before that wasn’t a good enough excuse for them anymore.

More than anything, she wanted that day back. She wanted that love back. She wanted to run into his arms and for him to hold her like he had the world in his arms. She wanted that man back and she wanted to be that girl again. No longer weathered by time and soured by fights. Just a young girl and a man - not so much young, but not old either - in love and so blissfully unaware of what the future would drag them kicking and screaming through like a child through a patch of nettles. She wanted that back. She wanted this to be easy again. She wanted her husband again. 

“Where is the man with his arms outstretched, to the woman he loves, with nothing to lose?”

Persephone stared on at her husband, watching as every word Orpheus sang setting in. She could finally see how his mind was whirring, seeing how the memories swirled within his mind as they did with her. Even after their day in the garden. When they ruled together with a kingdom that was truly half of hers. When the slept together in the same bed. When they trusted one another enough to keep the doubts at bay. When they could have raised a baby without a hitch because their road was still smooth beneath their train of marriage. 

Where had that man gone? When had he slipped away from her? She left him every year, yes, but he had transformed into an entirely different person when her back to him was turned. Time had not been kind on either of their souls. He was not the man she married anymore - and she not the woman he proposed to - and Persephone feared they were too far gone for either of them to return. She was no longer young. No longer a sheltered maiden child ignorant to the ways of the world. She had ran head first into one hell back then and the years had held her head down into another. She was a pitiful swarm of addiction and dysfunction. And he... who was he? Where was the man she married?

“Singing la la la la la la la...”

The strain was causing Persephone’s poor heart to ache. Days and months and years and centuries of mistakes overwhelming her made her feel ready to break down and mourn all she once had and lost before she truly appreciated it. 

Orpheus’ fingers stopped on his guitar. Silence befell the kingdom for no more than a few seconds. Persephone’s heart felt stilled in the pit of her chest, beating with sorrow for what once was. Hades took a faint breath inwards. 

“La la la la la la la...”

Persephone’s breath caught in her throat. If her eyes weren’t yet teary enough, her vision began to swim again. The melody itself was one thing. Hearing it on her husband’s voice was another entirely. She was smiling, suddenly, a teary, shaky little smile but a smile regardless, for the first time she could recall since he came calling for her on the train up above three months early. She took a step closer to him. He did the same. He reached a hand slowly out towards her. She did the same. 

“La la la la la la la.”

Hades and Persephone, hand in hand after decades of disagreements and bitterness and verging ever closer to divorce, looked at one another the way they had in that garden long ago. Another life, another world, when the mighty king was only a man and The Bringer of Death was only a girl. Up close, Persephone could see the faint streaks of tears on her husband’s face and his dark eyes shining with more. He held her hands tighter in his own like she may flee him any coming instant. She was finally content to let him. 

“La la la la la la...”

Together, at last, the gods sang the song of their love.


	12. Promises

Even in all their years of denied affection in both directions, the feeling of her husband’s hand against her own was never something Persephone had forgotten. Most years, that was the only part of him she would feel, with the rare exceptions of the previous years act which consequence she suffered more greatly than usual. They were always larger than hers, and rougher too, but she had liked that about him. She knew every line of his hands well, every callous and every scar, and he knew hers. He noticed over the years how her skin was thinning in the literal sense despite how it thickened to any insults thrown her way. He noticed how she’d try to occupy them with some meaningless activity when at least one wasn’t relaxed by a glass or bottle of something or other, as long as it was alcoholic. As rare as their touches were, their spouse’s hands were always something Hades and Persephone could reliably recall. 

But still, this felt different. It was a form of contact they hadn’t experienced since things took a sharp turn for the worse. He’d take her hand when he came to get her. He’d take her hand when the arrived underneath. That was it. No affection, just a considerate gesture which had become a habit on his part. But it wasn’t like that this time. For the first time in a long, long, long while, Persephone could finally feel her husband beneath that skin. 

He gripped her hands securely, the kind of security that drew her in way back when. His fingers brushed over her tanned skin, her own squeezing his hands as another swarm of tears hit her. She couldn’t even identify which contender it was that had pushed her to tears this time. It was all so much. She wanted to speak, but words escaped her as soon as she looked into his eyes the same way they had done the day they had married. 

The world stopped for a moment. All movement ceased, deceased souls and mortal lovers watching the king and queen in a nervous sort of anticipation. Persephone was used to her husband always knowing what he was doing, wether it suited her or not. Today had been quite the divergence from the norm. Hell, this entire year so far had been. But he didn’t this time. Neither did she. Still, he inhaled, his mouth opened as of to speak, but Persephone’s attention was caught by something else. 

She turned her eyes downwards, and Hades followed suit. Their hands slowly parted ways, both pairs of earth-dark eyes going wide with surprise. 

In the pale palm of Hades’ hand rested a single red carnation. 

Persephone’s flew up to cover her mouth, and wordlessly Hades looked to her. She could understand why. In truth, their powers could not have been more drastically different. She a goddess of life. He the lord of the dead. And, in actuality, with her quite literally full of life at the present moment, she was the more likely of the two to produce such a thing in the realm of death. Hades extended his hand towards her, but Persephone shook her head. This was not her doing. 

It wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility for her husband to create life. After all, he had grown the very pomegranate which bore the seeds binding beneath here for six months. He had done so out of pure, unfiltered love, unable to put such feelings into words nor song and defied the odds to lay his heart out before his wife. He could do so again, she was sure, and the proof lay before them both. 

Persephone lifted the carnation from her husband’s palm gently, more careful with the petals than she had ever been with herself, and pressed it to her husband’s chest. Over his heart. A cliche move, perhaps, but the soft beat beneath her touch reminded her that her husband did still lay somewhere beneath the cold demeanour he had adopted. She pinned the carnation to Hades’ pinstriped waistcoat, but she did not draw her hands away after the fact. She let them rest there, just feeling her husband’s solid chest beneath them. She had forgotten his warmth, she realised then, the way his chest would rise and fall with breaths beneath her palms. Hades had forgotten how gentle his wife’s hands could be when she wasn’t in a drunken fury. Even last year before her departure when this life inside her had taken form, there was no real affection in touching one another, both still mostly clothed and trying to ignore the disdain they knew was just as prominent in the other. They had forgotten how to love. 

Hades moved his hands cautiously to his wife’s waist, pausing as if expecting her to shove him away. For once, she didn’t. She closed her eyes as she felt the contact against her torso, something she was so unaccustomed to as she had become as starved of touch as Eurydice had been of food. She felt his touch travel closer to the swell of her belly, but Hades worries if he was overstepping some unseen kins, this dropping them from his body. Persephone’s moved from his chest, reaching down to take his hands in her own. Eyes met once more. Neither spoke. Neither needed to. For when Orpheus strummed his guitar again, their bodies moved in time with each other as if they had never before been out of tune. 

They had not danced since she was a far younger woman. Even so, as out of practice as each party was, none would have been able to tell had they not known better. They didn’t stumble, they didn’t falter. They moved and swayed and held their lover like the past few centuries were just little more than a bad dream. Persephone found herself astounded at just how gentle her husband could be the same way she had as a young girl first coming to know a man. Her stomach did not make their closer movements easy, but his hands were so careful with her, holding what he could reach of her like she was the most precious diamond ever pulled from his mines. As they slowed, as his hands held her body as close against him as he felt was safe, Persephone felt that old security in his grasp. She buried her head in Hades’ neck, inhaling his familiar scent of iron and ash, gripping the hand he did not have against her hips in her own. Hades pressed his face into his wife’s hair, though the wild curls were contained within a net, and they just stood. Orpheus’ music faded, the boy instead turning to his own lovestruck mortal girl eager fo escape while they could. The gods stayed together in each other’s arms. 

Their silence was finally broken by Persephone, though it wasn’t intentional - her attempt to stifle her weak sobs against her husband’s shoulder were not as successful as she may have liked, and she felt him trying to draw away in the assumption that it was yet again his fault. It was, in a way, but she was as much to blame as he for this. She grasped his hand tightly, wound her arm even more securely around his neck as her belly pressed against his firm torso. Not ideal. None of this was. It hadn’t been since she was torn from her love for six months a year. Nothing had ever been perfect for them, but damn if they were not stubborn to succeed in spite of it all. 

“I love you.”

Persephone’s words were faint. Breathed softly enough that ensured only Hades would make them out. But they held strength all the same. Of course, she was unable to see her husband’s reaction, but she felt as if he started to hold her a little closer. A little more lovingly, even, if that was possible. She doubted that it was her imagination. The pads of Hades’s fingers rubbed gently against the skin of her hand and he pressed his face closer against her chestnut hair. 

“I love you too.”

Hades’ response was just as quiet as her initial own, but it’s affect was no less powerful. Persephone did not know what she had expected to happen at first when she spoken. She didn’t know if she wanted him to respond or what he would even say if he did. But hearing those words in his deep, deep voice just did something to her damaged heart. Months of crying and isolation, of waiting for the divorce she believed was inevitable to be prepared for her to sign, all bubbled up and tightened her throat. She thought of all the nights she’d spent, tormented and alone, of the future she had prepared herself for as a lonely mother trapped with a fatherless child underground half of every year, and her husband’s reminder of love accompanied by his hands on her body broke her final resolve. 

She was a sobbing mess against her husband’s shoulder, pointed nails clinging to the expensive fabric of his waistcoat. He didn’t move, which she was thankful for, seemingly understanding now that these weren’t the typical tears he had seen her previously shed. She need this support against her now as much as she had months ago. And this time, he was here.

When they were wed, he had promised her many things. He had promised her riches - silver and gold and anything else in the depths of the mines. He had promised she would never want for anything. Persephone, then Kore, had never been a materialistic thing. The thought of riches was alluring, but never truly a driving factor in her decision to marry the god in her mother’s garden. That was a promise he had fulfilled ten times over. 

He had promised her a kind road below, underneath the earth in the kingdom they would rule. And to his credit, that is how it had been until fate had worked its wretched way between them. Her life had been a dream then. A dream albeit inconvenienced by her warmer seasons - that was her time above wife awake - but a dream nonetheless. She still believed that it would be as such for all eternity, that same love never ceasing to burn hotter than any foundry below could burn. But he had broken that promise when he broke the agreement, time and time again, earlier and earlier every year. 

And even this year, he had promised again. Why she still listened to a word he said at that point, she couldn’t say. She was unwise in her annoyance, wanting the confirmation that her child would not befall her fate of a missing father and a bitter mother. But still, she had taken his word with all the value that could still be placed within it. He had promised to try. To try not to fight, to try and return if not to how they had been in their glory days then at least to before their arguments were a daily activity. To try and stand each other enough to raise a child. Even if they went straight back to despising each other after the fact; well, she would have accepted that. Not ideal, no, but she was accustomed to having a marriage in shambles by now. She had long since stopped hoping for improvements for her own sake, for this was a battle bigger than herself. All the same, it was another battle that she had lost, and it was another promise that he had broken. 

Persephone held her husband like he may abandon her again the second she let him free. Things were not fixed, no, what each god had done to the other were not erased from history with one dance. But the love was still there. They still had a chance, just like Orpheus and Eurydice would soon be given by the king. If each of the gods were willing, they could still try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today! I wanted to aim and have this and Epic III published on the same day, hence the wait, so I hope you enjoy the extra addition this time. I know how much the state of the world right now must be affecting many of you, myself included, so I hope my little story can bring you some happiness today <3


	13. Wait for Me (reprise)

“You think they’ll make it?”

Persephone was on the doorstep of her and her husband’s large home, the handle of her wicker bag hanging loosely from one hand. The agreement had been settled. Orpheus and Eurydice could go, but only on the king’s terms. He wanted to test the mortal’s trust in one another, she identified without his needing to tell her. It was a tactical move more than anything, though she still suspected there was a hint of spite behind his ways. Letting the boy free with his dead lover from the underworld, no questions asked, was a bad political tactic if he wanted his stone-cold king image to remain in one piece. When Orpheus had asked final permission to leave, the queen could just about hear the voices harmonising in the back of the kings mind. Admittedly, she had almost fallen back into her bad habitual old ways and snapped at him when he said he didn’t know, because... well, how could he even consider denying him? After that beautiful song he had serenaded them with, how he had brought their hearts and bodies closer together than they had been in years. She was tempted, then, to rip him to shreds. Only verbally, mind you. Thankfully, the restraint she had developed served her well. She’d left the safe hold of his arms quite forcefully, but her mouth stayed shut.

Things were never as simple as a yes or no down here. She understood his struggle in giving the lovers an answer. Truthfully, she did, though she couldn’t help but hope that Hades wanted to give an outright yes. Regretfully, it was a question she would leave unanswered for fear of perhaps sparking an argument. Persephone, as much as she wished it could be, knew that nothing was that easy. Not politics. Not life. Most certainly not love. 

“I don’t know.”

Hades stood behind his wife, arms folded whilst watching the two lovers fade into the distance. The pair had soon disappeared beyond the factories littering the landscape of Hadestown, and so... well, that was that, wasn’t it? Either they would make it, or they wouldn’t. Persephone believed in them. They had her well wishes if nothing else in their favour, and Orpheus? She knew that boy. He was family to her. He would make it, she told herself, he walked to hell without turning back and he could walk out just the same. 

“Hades, you let them go,” the goddess turned back, looking upwards towards her husband. Her words came out more as thanks than she intended for them to, but it seemed fitting even so. 

The man raised his hands and turned his face away from his wife, exhaling a sigh. 

“I let them try.”

“That’s good enough, lover,” she replied in hopes to reassure him. “Thank you.”

Hades’ gaze found hers once more, the turmoil visible behind his own. This had not been a decision easily made for him, Persephone assumes, and that much gave her some odd form of comfort. 

“C’mere.”

Persephone shifted her body, patting the space on the step at her side. She would have stood to draw herself closer to her man, but every part of her body felt weighted more than ever. Her feet may well murder her where she stood if she even dared get up for anything other than a total necessity. Hades obeyed her slight command, sitting himself beside her in a wordless movement. They didn’t look at one another just yet, merely staring forwards at the quiet underworld. The workers had not yet been dealt with, and Persephone was honestly rather glad that she wouldn’t be here for that political headache of an ordeal. 

In fact, she wouldn’t be here to see much else that day. She would be gone for summer within the hour. 

“Ain’t got long left,” Persephone commented, her fingers lightly grasping the handle of her bag. “Been a long six months this time.”

“Mmh...”

A man of few words, her man. Always was, but it wasn’t always as frustrating as she found it now. Really? In their last minutes together, he couldn’t give her more than a sound or two?

“Hades, we...” Persephone began, losing her own words midway through the sentence. She shook her head, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply before she decided to speak yet again. She had to do this now, or it would never be done. “We gotta talk. Ain’t gonna have alone time like this come next year.”

She could feel his steady gaze upon her, but she didn’t turn to meet it this time. 

“What did you do with her?”

His gaze left her with notable haste. He was silent momentarily, but Persephone could sense how his mind was working without his speech to say it for him. 

“What do you-“

“Eurydice.”

Her head turned sharply, her eyes quickly examining her husband’s face. His gaze found hers briefly, but it’s interest was soon refocused to the ground beneath their feet. There was a delay in his answer, and that set Persephone’s nerves slight. Well, brother, that was an answer enough, wasn’t it? If he was really giving her an honest answer, he wouldn’t need to take his time thinking about what to say. A simple yes or no, it required, nothing he needed to mull over in that thick iron skill of his. He shook his head slightly, she raised a brow. 

“Ain’t done nothing to that girl.” Hades finally answered in a low-spoken confession. Fates, why was it always in these situations that he became unreadable to her?

“Hades, don’t you lie to me now.” Persephone spoke with a firmness she wasn’t accustomed to using with a volume this understated. Normally when she found it necessary, she’d raise her voice. Didn’t give him the option not to listen to her - at least hear if not listen. She was prone to spiralling, getting louder and louder until the whole damn underworld was in on their domestic dispute. Normally she had some drinks in her system, and that damn sure did help. “I want to hear the truth. We ain’t gonna fix any’a this if we don’t address it.”

“Ain’t lyin’. Didn’t do a thing to that girl.” Hades restated. Persephone opened her mouth to snap something back, but it seemed her husband finished. “Brought the girl down with... intentions, but... when the time came I couldn’t go through with it. Kept thinkin’ of you.”

Persephone turned away and her stomach dropped. There was a lump in the back of the throat, catching at her breath. This answer was what she wanted, wasn’t it? He’d kept his vow. Brought her down with bad intentions as he may, nothing had been done out of sight behind closed doors. So why were her nerves still slight? Why was dread pulling her down harsher than gravity?

“How you mean?” she asked, simply intended to fill space in one of their long-held mutual silences. “Thinkin’ of me.”

“Meant what I said.”

And he could have just left it at that the way he always does. But the thing is, brother, this time he didn’t. This time he sensed that he wasn’t saying enough, was leaving too much work for her to do so she perhaps could just find the answer she was on the hunt for. So he paused as usual, but he spoke before she got the opportunity to swoop in as usual. 

“Every time I looked at the girl-“

Eurydice, Persephone wanted to correct him, it won’t kill ya to use a name, but unlike some other people in the underworld, she can read the room. 

“-I thought’a the way that you’d looked at me ‘fore I brought her into my office. Couldn’t get ya outta my head. And then the little thing asked ‘bout you and our...” the man sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t have the strength in me after that.”

“She asked?”

Hades nodded. 

“Wanted to know how you were comin’ along. With...”

When Hades gestured to her stomach, an icy wave washed over Persephone when she realisation set in. Hades didn’t do anything. Hades didn’t do anything, but she sure as hell had. Damn if she’d been weak as him and unable to follow through, but she came right close. And for what? What did she do it for? To prove what point? To enact what revenge?

Persephone rested her elbows on her knees, covering her mouth with her hands as she slowly processed the reality of things she had been newly acquainted with in Hades’ words. He concernedly raised a hand to try and console her, but it was quickly lowered just the same. She didn’t see it, but had she, well, she wouldn’t blame him at all. During her better days with the ways recent years had panned out, she’d merely raise her lip and snarl at the hand that fed her those seeds. Worse days, she’d sink her fangs into that flesh as she was forbidden to do with the fruit itself. 

“Are you... I don’t understand.” Hades muttered, more for himself to hear than for her, but they still reached her ears. 

“I coulda killed our baby for no damn reason...” she whispered in a horrified tone. He said nothing, and she assumed it was out of choice. That night with the bottle was not something one easily forgot about, especially not Hades. “Coulda destroyed the one good thing we made together in centuries and there wouldn’t even’a been no good excuse for it...”

An uncomfortable silence overcame the air between them when Hades realised what she meant. She couldn’t see what he was doing, how he was looking at her or if he was even looking at her at all. She was disgusted with herself. Even if he had followed through with the deed, how could she have blamed it on the child? The child she wanted, still, even after all its father had done to her. And what if she’d gone through with it? If she’d emptied that bottle and maybe added another into the mix, what then? Hades was not as far gone as she had decided, as she had gathered from the assumptions he’d lead her to make. But surely, that would have been the final straw. 

“I ain’t mad at you,” the woman spoke. Her husband was a real intelligent man when it came to facts and figures, but he was inept with situations such as this. Stupid man when it was most inconvenient for her. She felt he may require some reassurance. “Be damn strange if I was mad you ain’t sleep with the girl, but...”

She could feel Hades’ eyes on her now, she could imagine the look that was accompanying them. Persephone inhaled deeply, her vocal chords straining as she tried to speak her second piece. 

“I’m mad at myself,” were the words she got out at long last. “I made... I made assumptions I shouldn’t’a made and I did things I shouldn’t’a done and I... I could’a really fucked things up ‘cause’a that.”

Hades nodded and held the eye contact with his wife. Surprisingly, neither one of them looked away, as intense at the moment was for both. 

“Did you... intend to kill the child?”

Persephone sighed, paused, and reluctantly nodded. It needed to be discussed. She didn’t want to relive that night, of course, but transparency was a necessity if they really were committed to fixing this. 

“Yes.”

She saw something change in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, so she decided to proceed with her explanation. He might as well know she didn’t drink as much as he may have thought before he settled on his new opinion of her. 

“After I saw you and Eurydice goin’ into your office I was... mad. Real damn mad and real damn upset and I ain’t know how to manage them feelings without a drink or two. I got the workers and took ‘em into my little crack in the wall-“

She and Hades had never discussed her speakeasy’s existence directly. Presumably, it wasn’t allowed, and she always liked to tell herself that it was a secret so she got that little rush from rule breaking. But of course she knew better than that. Hades probably knew about that place as soon as those doors were opened. But this was something. She was being upfront. That was a good sign, she thought. 

“-and I tried to make ‘em feel better. Hell, make ‘em feel somethin’. If I can’t help myself, might as well try help someone else.”

“Mm,” was all that Hades mumbled in response. Poor timing on her part. 

“I got ahead of my myself. Forgot my ways and all that. Workers wanted me to drink with ‘em, I had two glasses of somethin’ or other and that was that.”

There was confusion in Hades’ eyes. She was clearly dancing around the topic, she knew it well herself, but she excused it un her own head as just giving him the full story. Painting a full picture for him, if you will and framing it real nice and pretty on the wall. 

“Workers did that?”

“Don’t you blame ‘em for what I done, Hades. Ain’t their fault.”

That sternness was lacing her voice in a way that let Hades know she meant it. She always meant it, but maybe the sobriety would make her come off more serious than the plethora of other occasions she’d said the same. 

“I went home after that, and I just... I wanted to see ya. Felt like it’d give me some closure on what you did. Maybe I was in a mood to pick a fight, I don’t even remember what was goin’ through my head. But then you weren’t there.”

Persephone paused. She sighed and noticed how she’d been pressing her hand to her stomach all this time, her back dropped on the ground. No going back from here. 

“Somethin’ in me just broke. I thought you were still back in your office with her doing who knows what, and I couldn’t bear it. Havin’ ya win over me like that. Makin’ me feel so... I wanted to hurt ya the way you were hurtin’ me, and there was your liquor cabinet right next to me.”

Hades exhaled a long sigh. They’d stopped looking at each other again. They were still getting accustomed to the art or talking to their respective spouse, doing so during the final hours of this year’s stay on her behalf of this. 

“I didn’t drink that bottle, though.”

Hades turned to her and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t believe her. She didn’t blame him. The crime scene he’d witnessed and incriminated her indefinitely. 

“I meant to, same as you. But...” she shrugged and tapped her stomach. “Your kid has good timing. Baby gave me a kick back to reality in a literal sense, brought me back to my ways and I... I couldn’t go through with it no more.”

Hades and Persephone were silent for another painfully long second or two. What do you say after that? After detailing how you almost induced a miscarriage just to make your husband feel guilty for something he didn’t do?

“You tellin’ me the truth?” the king asked, breaking the silence but not easing the tension in the slightest. 

“You think I’d still be pregnant if I wasn’t?”

To be fair, she was right. They only stocked strong stuff down here. Hades wasn’t a big drinker, anyways, only the odd glass of whiskey here and there, so it was clearly all to keep her satiated. If she’d emptied that bottle the way he’d thought, she would have lost this baby long ago. 

“I ain’t askin’ for your forgiveness right now, Hades, I’m just askin’ for you to trust me this time.” Persephone stated. “If we’re gonna try this again, we gotta trust each other. Those mortals need trust to get outta hell and so do we.”

“I know we do,” Hades agreed with a nod. He probably hated that comparison, she thought, but he didn’t comment on how much greater he was thank those red blooded mortal lovers. And damn, when was the last time he’d agreed with her on something? “Ain’t just us anymore, is it?”

“No,” Persephone turned to her husband at that, and almost out of nowhere she was in tears again. She was an emotional mess without all of this to encourage her anyways, given the baby ready to get out of her any minute. 

At first, she didn’t realise Hades was holding her. But he was. She was crying against his shoulder all of a sudden, tears staining a shirt that she knew was expensive but hell, it wasn’t like he didn’t have more. He wasn’t holding her the way he used to. One hand on her back was all she got, but that was enough. Part of him was just cautious of the presumed fragility of her body, didn’t want to make a wrong move here and mess it all up. Persephone had never been a particularly pretty crier, but she couldn’t have cared less. He rarely saw her cry like this, if ever, given how she’d scream at him and storm off to drink and cry her eyes out in piece. Genuine sadness wasn’t a side she was fond of displaying. She pressed her eyes against the sturdy support her husband provided, her breathing ragged while he rubbed slow circles into her back. 

“How’d things get this bad?” she whimpered, her own hands still and fallen limp at her sides a she sobbed. “How’d we fuck things up this bad, Hades?”

If Hades replied, she didn’t hear him. She was scared, too scared to pay much attention to her surroundings anymore. And truth be told, he was as well. They had so very much to fix and so very little time to fix it. Time that they couldn’t even spend together, save for a few days scattered across the months. This wasn’t just for them, like he had said himself. Soon there would be another life relying on them. What kind of parents would they be if they can hardly stand to be in the same room as each other? It terrified Persephone and Hades an equal amount, but still they could not find the words to vocalise such emotions swirling within each of them. 

They stayed like that for a short while. Persephone crying, Hades holding her as she did so. Both were thinking. Just thinking about this winter. Thinking about next spring. A new chapter of their eternal lives was approaching, and it was a chapter that they each feared immensely. It was that kind of fear that could overwhelm you, and it damn well did. For good reason, it did. They weren’t prepared. They hadn’t spoken for most of her pregnancy bar their argument on her first day down. They hadn’t discussed any of the important things a couple should discuss before becoming parents. Hadn’t even gone over names. 

They’d always had strange relationships with their parents. Sometimes strange in a good way, mostly strange in a bad. And that was just what applied to her. Hades, now he was a very different case.Hades, though he wouldn’t admit it, had been plagued by terror ever since her letter had been placed upon his desk. To say his father was a poor one would be the understatement of this century, and the last, and those to come. His childhood had done some irreparable damage to his mind, and the war he had battled against his own kind had dug the metaphorical wounds deeper. And, while he knew he would never be that bad, knew that he would never spark a war between his children and their elders, he knew the impact it could have. He didn’t have a reference for how to be a good father. What if he made a mistake? What if he accidentally took a wrong turn, made a wrong move that ruined his child forever? He knew the damage that could be done. He knew the worst of it. He did not wish that upon his own young.

As for Persephone, well, she’d grown up in quite a unique way, hadn’t she? All she remembered of her own father was how he argued with her mother. As a little girl, she tried to ignore it. She’d just hide away in a little imaginary world of her own design where she could pretend that mama wasn’t crying and daddy wasn’t leaving. The day she realised he wasn’t coming back, it was a bittersweet sort of feeling she had. Mama seemed- well, not happier, but she was less sad and angry all of the time. But still, she was just a child. She wanted her family to be together, and for them to be happy together at that. She didn’t understand for years to come why things couldn’t be the way that she wanted so badly. Demeter had worked herself down to the bone for her little girl. A little too much, some may say, given how long it had taken that little girl to realise she’d become an adult underneath her mother’s fierce protection. Her childhood did not compare to her husband’s in severity, but it was still one that she would not wish for her own baby. All she wanted now was to give this little god a good life, but... how hard would that be now? Would she end up like her own mama, alone and bitter, while still damned to see her old lover every year no matter what she may protest. Maybe they weren’t fighting now, but that didn’t mean they’d never fight again. It didn’t eliminate the possibility of separation. 

“Are we even ready for this?” a tearful Persephone asked, her voice wavering. 

Hades didn’t respond. She took that as a no. It hurt to hear - or think, in this particular case - but she couldn’t exactly blame him. He was right, probably. Definitely. They weren’t ready for this. They weren’t ready to raise a child. Maybe she should have gotten rid of it. He would have hated her, sure, but soon he would hate her anyway. When they inevitably began arguing over some parenting disputes that evolved into something worse the way it always did. 

“We...” she began before her voice betrayed her, fading away. “We don’t have to keep it. When the baby’s born I can give it to some other god who’ll raise ‘em better. We can try a different time, we can wait a while until we-.”

“No.”

Persephone glanced upward to see her man’s face, and she sees a strange glint in his eyes. A shine that she came to identify as tears.

“We’re keepin’ this child. I want... I want this child. We can try. I want to try.”

“Are you sure?”

Persephone knew from a personal experience that a baby didn’t mend a relationship. If it did, she would have grown up with a father. She wouldn’t have needed to marry him to become a queen, because she would already be entitled to royalty; but of course, that was far from the case. On the contrary, she’d seen that offspring would tear the tapestry of a relationship seam by seam were it not tightly stitched time and time again. She was still standing in darkness with how she wanted things to progress, but she knew that she didn’t want to lose her husband. As much as she’d hated him this winter, she couldn’t imagine not being his wife. Well, maybe she could, but she didn’t want to. 

“Scares me, but... we ain’t too far gone. Ain’t gone past the point of no return just yet. We can make it outta this alive.”

Persephone sat up, straightening her back. This was far from their own fight. It had never been their own fight. Every argument they had during the winter affected the world beyond their kingdom’s concrete walls. Every screaming match and insults thrown back and forth; that meant the demise of countless mortals. If Hades knew that, he ignored it wilfully. But you can’t ignore it when your own child is suffering as a result. Hades was good at turning a blind eye to what he did not care to see. He was talented in that aspect. But she wouldn’t let him anymore. Nothing would change without piles of effort in both directions. They needed to battle against the way the river ran, to struggle and strain for the life of an entirely new being if not themselves. 

“Hades, this... it ain’t gonna be easy. I need you to promise me you’re gonna change, nothin’ will improve if nothing changes here. Are we gonna try again? Really, this time.”

She heard him inhale deeply, and she pulled herself away from the firmness of his shoulder against her face. His arm stayed against his wife’s back. 

“It’s almost spring. Not enough time left this year. We’ll try again next fall.”

Persephone shook her head. 

“No. Ain’t got that kind of time. Not if we’re raising this baby. Kid’ll be a few months old by the time I’m back here. We gotta try even if I ain’t here.”

He shot over a look that read “how do you expect us to do that?” and really, she shouldn’t have blamed him, but she still did. He could visit her whenever he wanted if he just took an hour or two out of his oh-so-busy schedule once a month. Yes, she’d prefer if he altered her prior to his arrival, but if he wasn’t even going to make an attempt to see her and then whine about how lonely he was, she wouldn’t have it. 

“Come up once in a while. Visit me and your kid, I ain’t lettin’ you stay absent for the first six months’a their life.” 

Hades paused again. Persephone raised an eyebrow, he opened his mouth to speak. 

“I will,” the king agreed with a nod, admittedly taking his wife by surprise. “I’ll come see ya. Both of ya. I want... I want to be involved.”

Persephone smiled. That was good. That was a helpful sign, surely. She placed a smaller hand against her husband’s arm, gazing up at him. 

“Thank you, Hades,” she spoke, her voice clearly genuine. “Really.”

A sort-of smile took hold of Hades’ face, and Persephone’s didn’t fade just yet. 

“Least I can do.”

“Sure is,” the woman replied with a soft laugh. “I’ve been haulin’ this thing around with me for months now, you might as well come see what I made for ya.”

Hades’ eyes left her, focusing on something in the industrial distance that Persephone couldn’t be bothered to identify. She shifted a little closer to him, resting her head back against his shoulder as her hand fell back to her side. This journey was almost over, but a new one would soon begin. And it was one she would have to travel alone. For the most part, at least, if Hades kept this promise the way he had kept some others. 

“It’s kind of a shame,” Persephone muttered, looking towards the underworld at nothing in particular. Orpheus and Eurydice were long gone. The queen knew how long a road that was to walk, the couple were barely even a quarter of the way to the surface world. “We spent our last quiet winter avoidin’ each other. Ain’t gonna have this kind of alone time next year, you know.”

“Mmh... ain’t been too quiet ‘round here in a while, anyhow.”

She knew that was her husband’s attempt to lighten the mood, so she didn’t vocalise the little jab of pain in her heart. They’d been fighting so much it was just a normal day for them when they did. But now, she tried not to dwell upon the negativity. They were going to try, weren’t they? They were going to improve all of this. The fights wouldn’t stop, no, it wouldn’t all end right away, but it would lessen at least. It would take longer to undo this damage than it did to inflict it

They went quiet again, and it was starting to get on Persephone’s nerves. There was so much ground for the two of them still to cover and yet this is how they chose to spend the final drags of the colder months together? It was hypocritical of her, really, to criticise Hades when she wasn’t making much of an effort to converse herself. But she was better at criticising him than she was at tackling hard topics, especially when she was sober. She’d been sober for a damn long time now, she realised, and that ache for alcohol wasn’t plaguing her restlessly the way it had some months ago. 

“I’m gonna try and stay sober. You know, after baby’s born.” Persephone said to break the silence. She was honest, too. She usually was, but especially now. “Think it might do me some good.”

“Hard habit to lose,” Hades remarked, and Persephone laughed breathily.

“Don’t I know it, lover,” she answered with a shrug, not fully realising that was the first time she’d used the term since her initial arrival. “I made it this far, though. For the most part.”

It would help to move on, as well, but she didn’t say that one. She enjoyed drinking sometimes, of course. However, more often than not she’d end up silently fuming or outwardly distraught when other drunken days returned to her memory. Drinking had bad ties to events that she’d rather forget, that she’d need to forget if she was going to leave her own old way of life behind as Hades was swearing to do himself. In a way, this was the final step she felt that she needed to take. Anyway, regardless of that, it would be one problem of many overcame. 

“It’d be better for the baby too. Me stayin’ sober,” she added after a second or two. “Ain’t never brought out the best in me, I know, don’t want them to see that side’a their mama.”

Far too many people had, in fact, seen that side of her for Persephone to ever really erase it. Until those people died, of course. Then they’d forget everything down here. Or maybe they wouldn’t. She didn’t know what Hades was planing to do with his workers come the time she turned her back to the underworld. Unforgettable as this chapter would be, she was grateful to finally be allowing it to close. 

Hades was eerily silent. He was never a very conversational man, no, but this was an uncomfortable extreme. Persephone wanted him to speak. Properly speak. Not his dry little responses to conversations she was attempting to start singlehandedly. She was leaving soon. Was this how he wanted to spend their last moments together? A bitter remark found its way to Persephone’s young. She bit it back just in time. 

If he wanted to be silent, she’d let him. This process would be all about respect, wouldn’t it? Respect in both directions, mutual understanding of one another that they had each both equally unfortunately and impressively ceased to learn in their relationship. Quiet was nice, anyway, every once in a while. The machinery of the city was yet to restart, the furnaces yet to reignite, and the queen took a moment to enjoy it. She breathed in, letting her tense muscles relax as much as they physically good, given her physical stage at the time being. Who could confidently say how this place would look or sound or smell when she returned, baby in her arms? Part of her wanted to ask Hades what he would change; wether his answer reflected the underworld or his own self was you to him. But she didn’t. She let a man have his quiet, thoughts to himself as long as he wanted them.

“We really doin’ this..?”

Persephone looked up to the side, gaze focusing on her husband’s face. His voice didn’t sound like King Hades, if that made sense. That was her husband talking, brother, all royalty and divinity wavering away from him. He sounded upset. Why was he upset? Well, not like he didn’t have plenty to be upset about. She was just worried. Her man was good about repressing things. She hated that, but it was what she’d gotten accustomed to. 

“Hades?” she muttered, one darker hand moving to rest atop his subconsciously. 

“We’re... we’re gonna be parents, lover,” Hades continued, his wife’s eyes studying his face. We’re gonna have a child...”

A smile took hold of Persephone’s face. A soft, sweet smile as her husband’s eyes rediscovered the warmth of hers. The pads of her fingers brushed over the pale skin of his knuckles, the roughness of which had never bothered her much. 

“We sure are. Been a damn rough road but we made it.” Persephone pressed her cheek against the king’s shoulder, enjoying this moment of physical contact while she still could. Hades’ hand turned, taking his wife’s into his own, to which she responded by giving his a soft squeeze. “You’ll be a good father, Hades.”

She caught him smile, but something hinted it wasn’t genuine. Something in his eyes, the way they flitted away from hers when she said it. She understood, of course. No one had really had it rough as him and his siblings when it came to a fatherly relationship, so the fears were expected at the very least. 

“I mean it, lover. You ain’t gonna be like him.”

“Just...” Hades began, voice trailing away. “It scares me, is all.”

“Scares me too. But we got each other, don’t we? We just have to help each other through this. We’re gonna try and it’ll all be fine.” 

How much she believed her words, she wasn’t sure, but she hoped that they would ease Hades’ nerves whatever way they could. It seemed to help, even if it was just minimally, because he met her gaze once more and smiled a little more genuinely. 

“You’ll be a good mother.”

“I hope so. If I’m not, sure mama’ll let me know what-“ Persephone cut herself off as she received a sharp kick from the inside. She positioned her spare hand over her belly, caressing the area she’d felt the baby. “Someone’s restless. Must know it’s almost time to meet us, hm?”

Hades watched with intrigue as Persephone soothed her baby. It was tragic that he’d missed so much of this pregnancy, and he debated vocalising this regret. For once in his life, though, he read the room a little better. This seemed like a nice moment that he wasn’t keen to ruin. Seemed is the word, because he wasn’t actually all that sure what was happening. Persephone glanced back at him and identified the confusion. An explanation would be provided. 

“Baby’s kickin’,” she began. “It doesn’t hurt nothin’, just annoys me sometimes. Loves annoyin’ their mama, this one, gets that from you. Here, gimme your hand.”

She carefully pulled her hand from Hades’ grasp, guiding his pale palm to rest aside hers on her stomach. He raised an eyebrow far darker than his hair, slightly confused, until his eyes sparked alight with a new sense of joy. The type he’d never thought he would feel. He’d felt his child, his still nameless son or daughter, kick against his hand. Persephone admired his face as a sudden smile took over it. The first she’d seen Hades display in years. 

“That’s yours. We made that together, we did.” Persephone reminded him. As if he really needed that reminder. “We’ll be meetin’ this little sweetheart soon.”

Hades nodded, before slowly shifting his hand to brush across his wife’s slender, tanned fingers. 

“I love you.”

His voice was hushed. Genuine, of course, in that moment, with all the volume he lacked as of now. She knew that now. She knew he loved her, knew he’d never stopped, but a reminder was a lovely thing to hear. 

“I love you too.”

The world stopped in that instant. It was only the gods, only the king and queen, only a man and woman, together at last as spring was rearing it’s head. They were out of practice, stupidly so, but they’d never forgotten how to kiss. Their fingers stayed linked upon Persephone’s stomach as their lips met, eyelids falling closed as the unfamiliar feeling ran pleasantly through the two gods. It was a gentle kiss, nothing dramatic. Just what they needed to punctuate this blissful moment. Well, as blissful as it could get after what each had been through over only six months. Persephone hadn’t realised just how badly she had missed this. Just her and her husband, kissing her husband and feeling that sacred tenderness he saved for her and her alone. Her lips curved into a hint of a smile against her husband’s as his hand brushed the outline of her jaw, and she leant gratefully into his touch. She wished things could have stayed that way.

But of course it couldn’t. Nothing is forever, even with a thread of life as uncuttable as theirs. 

The shrill sound of the train’s whistle sounded in the distance, altering the couple that it was time to pull away. Their lips parted reluctantly, their hands slowly drifting from each other. Hades’ eyes held in their darkness a somber look that matched the air that hung over them. Persephone swallowed, still leaning against the hand still pressed to her cheek and drinking up all the contact she could still have before it was time to go back up top to mama. 

“Time to go...” she whispered, and her husband did nothing but nod. 

-

Hades walked a very unsteady Persephone to the train station, helping her however he could, making sure she didn’t trip on the uneven grounds, things of the like. Soon enough, too soon for their liking, she was stood in front of a train awaiting her alone. She looked back at Hades with a far more regretful feeling in her gut than she’d ever had in her more recent memories, but eased herself by the knowledge that it wouldn’t be as long as their usual time apart. 

“Won’t be long, you know,” she reminded him of the same. “Soon as our baby’s born, you’re comin’ up. Don’t want to hear no complaints about that.”

“Ain’t complainin’,” Hades reassured her, kissing her hand gently before he dropped it from his own to allow her to step onto her vessel to the surface. 

Persephone shifted her coat over her shoulders, bag grasped in one hand, as she took one last good look at her man. A father he’d be not long from now. A mother she’d be. The thought still shook her, but... not in a bad way. A strange little spark of excitement, rather. 

“See ya soon, lover,” Persephone said with a small wave goodbye as the doors slid closed and the train started to move. 

She quickly found her place in one of the trains expensive seats, grateful for not having to stand anymore. The loose fabric of her dress still bore her husband’s colours, something she couldn’t imagine mama would be too fond of seeing, but damn that right now. 

Her head turned, watching as her journey began and the underworld was left behind, and she wondered how everything would be when next year came by.


	14. We Raise Our Cups

Hades awoke with a start as his reflexes sparked alight. There was a hand on his shoulder, one that had no place in being there, and the king quickly turned and rose from his resting place to shake it away. It had been just over a week since Persephone’s departure from the underworld, and the thought of her had not once left the king’s mind. Despite being the persistent, often times stubborn - according to his wife - business man that he was, he had finally stumbled upon something that shook his work ethic like a wolf to its soaking fur. It was to be expected, of course, and he did not see it as a hindrance. Work was the last thing he wanted to do. Gods, saying that, was he really still himself? He was just on edge, to say, not fully knowing how to feel which made things progressively worse. How couldn’t he be? There was too much still up in the air. Too much he didn’t know, too much of even that which he wasn’t sure he would want to know. He had tried to write. To send her a letter the way he used to. Spent hours barely putting pen to paper only to scrap the first, second and twentieth drafts. Hermes, somehow catching wind of his challenges, we shall say  
\- which was really just him being observant  
\- offered graciously to report back any news his half-sister may give to her husband. So far, he had heard nothing. To look upon the good side, it meant she wasn’t hurt in any way. On the other, all about her was still mystified.

He wished he could be with her in these times, their life always potential hours from changing in the most permanent way that they could. Was that what a soon-to-be father should do? Shouldn’t he be by her side every waking moment? It was, he supposed, his own fault. Had he not collected her three months early, she would be giving birth down here. However, he was thankful for her absence, in one way or another. He knew that she was in good hands. Demeter would certainly know what to do in this situation better than he would. The realm of the dead had scarcely been equipped for a goddess of life, let alone her bearing a second. He had no help, he had no knowledge of how to handle a birth before or after the child was in his arms. He didn’t want to be responsible for any harm that may befall her. Not again. Never, ever again. She was safe up there, even if that meant being away from him. The thought of her was never enough, but it would have to do, until the time came. 

The king immediately sat upright in his bed, eyes snapping open to see Hermes standing at his side. He had awoken him from the first rest he had gotten in days. The younger god drew his darker hand away quickly, his silver suit jacket slung over his arm. 

“Mornin’ sir,” the messenger greeted, reaching into the pocket of his waistcoat. 

“How is she?” Hades asked. No use dancing around the topic. Both men knew what Hermes was here for. Thankfully, the younger god picked up on the idea. Get this over with good and quickly.

“Doin’ good. Her mama sent me down with this. Don’t know which of ‘em write it, but thought ya might wanna give it a read either way,” he answered. Out of his waistcoat, he pulled a letter that Hades instantly made a grab for. Hermes grinned, but he said nothing, letting the king read the letter in silence.

It was time. 

The second he was finished his reading of the words, Hades was out of bed. 

“Already got the train ready and waitin’ for ya,” Hermes spoke as Hades pulled his usual suit out of his wardrobe. Hermes had read the letter then. Could the man keep his eyes off of anything, or was the word confidential just absent from his vocabulary. “Couldn’t imagine you’d be keen on waitin’ too long.”

His routine was rushed, but he still made an effort with his appearance before he set foot out of the door. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror before exiting; his hair was messier than usual, his eyes bore dark circles beneath them. The god chose to ignore this time how his hair was the same blinding white as his father’s had been, how he had inherited his jaw of iron and eyes of coal. Now was not the time to think of him, he reminded himself as he adjusted his long black coat over his shoulders. There are better things to thing about now, more important matters to attend to. You will not become him. You are different. You are not your father. He repeated those thoughts like he believed them.

The king walked with the messenger at his side through a significantly different city on their way to the train. It was darker now. More bearable to take in now was the sight of his realm. The lights had been the first thing to go, as they were the easiest to fix of the issues he’d gathered that she had. Well, not gone. Not yet, at least. They had been dimmed down to a fire’s dying glow, turned all but entirely off. The production in the factories, while still somewhat avid, had slowed, with many of the workers on strike which he presumed Persephone would be in high support of. He still didn’t know what to do about them. He wanted to ask her, but he couldn’t imagine she’d be in much of a mood to discuss their politics today. 

“How are ya, Hades?” Hermes asked as they neared their vessel, breaking the silence that the older man had been appreciating. 

“Mmh...” the other just grunted at first, sliding his dark glasses out of his pocket in preparation. He had never been good with the sunlight. “Anxious.”

“Only my sister could do it to ya,” the messenger chuckled. He was right. Only Persephone had ever made the king waver in his ways. 

“How is she?”

“Ain’t seen her the past few days. Her mama didn’t want me around,” he answered with a shrug. “Ain’t never like me much, that one.” 

Demeter was never all too fond of Zeus’ other children - who she was much less fond of, however, was his brother. Not the third, no, she’d made some exceptions here and there for him. Sone real big exceptions if the nymphs were to be believed. It was Hades she didn’t like. For a clear reason. He had taken away her only real remaining family. That was a damn good reason to most. One that not many could blame her for, really, but Hades has always rationalised it for himself. 

“Glad I won’t be there for that conversation,” Hermes commented in addition as they approached the train. 

The messenger snapped his fingers, and on command for its passenger, the doors slid open for the king. 

“All aboard, your majesty.”

Hades ignored him. Not even by choice this time. For all he knew, he wasn’t in the underworld anymore. All around him was blurred. More present in his own thoughts than in reality. And those thoughts weren’t a pretty place to be.

His snakeskin boots thudded against the train floors as he paced up and down the carriage. He’d meant what he said about anxious. He hadn’t been eating. Hadn’t been sleeping. Hadn’t been working, damn it, and who is he without his work and his wife? He hated that he couldn’t see her. Hades it more than what he was used to. Why was he so scared, so worried? Surely, this was not a feeling he would be granted without qualifying reasons, would he? What could have happened without him there to help her? What if she was hurt? What if it was serious? What if the child was hurt? Gods forbid, what if both? Could she die? She was bred of a different pantheon, plenty had changed with them. Their blood held a warmer hue, a tinge of the mortal red swimming through the divine golden life fluids that ran through her veins. Quite uncomfortably close to mortal - not a lot, but the hint she was to Hades was far too much - and mortal tendencies meant mortal dangers following behind her. He’d heard of plenty of mortal women dying in childbirth and their widowed husband’s hysterically mourning after their lost lovers, lost offspring, until it drove them into their very own graves. He knew because he’d seen them all. He owned them all. What if that was his destiny?

And even if both mother and child survived, If they were perfectly healthy up there, how would they manage after the fact? They had promised to try, of course, but still Hades did not know how to make his start. When it takes a mortal songwriter to remind a couple they yes, they did, in fact, still love each other, that there were still roses beneath the briars, that was far less than a good sign to start with. That poet had brought him hope. Had brought his wife hope. The love he held for that songbird Hades had shot down for himself. Why wouldn’t they have? That love was defying the odds as their own godly love had done lifetimes ago. One couple had walked out of the underworld. The other had battled their fellow gods to let one of them walk inside. 

But they had failed.

Orpheus has failed. 

If they couldn’t succeed - those young, love-blinded fools - how could they? Orpheus had not trusted Eurydice. After all they had done, all they had promised, he hadn’t trusted her when it mattered more than ever. He hadn’t waited. Hades was a stubborn man, he was, always had a tendency to ignore what he didn’t want to see, but this was a skin-crawling parallel even he was unable to ignore. 

He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t prepared. Fates, if he’d just... be hated to admit it, but if he’d just listened to her then maybe he wouldn’t be such a well masked nervous wreck. He always panicked that she wouldn’t return to him, but this was a different brand of fear. He shouldn’t have come so early. That way, he’d know what she’d needed during her pregnancy and what she’d need after - what the baby would need and what accommodations needed to be made. That way maybe they wouldn’t have fought. He wouldn’t have come so close to breaking their vow. What would he even say to her when they came face to face? To Demeter? Surely, that woman knew the ins and outs of their issues. Better than anyone he knew how her daughter was never one to hold her tongue when it was fiery enough to scald her mouth. She was never a secretive woman, his wife.

Hades’ mind worked in mysterious ways, and he hated all of them. So did his wife, in most cases. It’s what had driven up to take his pride early. What put up that damned wall. What was making him now run a white hand through his whiter hair as those melodies that so frequently called upon him made themselves asserted in this situation.

“You’ll be just like him, you know,” the highest woman crowed. 

“She’ll kick you out as soon as you show your face,” the second followed.  
“Why would she take you back? Why, when the world is at her feet?”

“And even if she does keep her disobedient dog,” the final voice joined her sisters. The deepest one, she was. The fate of death. Always the most persistent. Always there if you cannot hear her. She shouldn’t torment gods, but that ceased to stop her, “you’ll only ruin her again. You won’t change, you’ll ruin her and the child she never wanted.”

“Never wanted it. Tried to get rid of it. She’ll give it away just like she said. She doesn’t want your spawn even now.”

“Save yourself the trouble.”

“Safe yourself the pain.”

“Abandon her before she does such to you. Why keep a woman who you’ll only hurt?”

“Who’ll only hurts you?”

“Why, when you have the girl?”

“You wanted her.”

“You seduced her.”

“Lack of action doesn’t mean the lack of thought, dear man. Pathetic man.”

“Couldn’t follow through with it. Keep that ageing addict who can’t stand the sight of you in her vicinity, is that so?”

“You made her that way. She was a happy thing before you.”

“You ruined her.”

You ruined her. 

Hades fell to a seat. Elbows on the desk in front and face hidden in his hands. He stayed like that far longer than he realised. He heard the women laugh. Taunting him, they were, but taunting him with truth. She had only fallen so greatly because of him. If he’d only listened, she would still find joy in life. In marriage. It had become an obligation to her. A journey absent choice back and forth every year. And in those women’s own names, had he not known the expression of his wife’s misery as well as he did, what would he have done? Would Eurydice have been utilised for what he intended? She claimed to forgive him, but could that possibly be true? When he’d held her down deeper and deeper until she was begging for the bottle, until she...

Turn back. 

He wanted to turn back. He didn’t know why but he wanted to. Needed to. He couldn’t do this. It wasn’t right. 

Hades stood. His full intentions were to march himself up to the drivers carriage and demand the fickle god to keep his route back to his kingdom. 

But by the time he stood, there was already sunlight beaming into his eyes. 

There was no turning back choice anymore. The train was already pulling to a halt when Hades eased his vision with help from the sunglasses Persephone hated on him. It was a far different affair now were one to compare it to the equinox. No crowds sending her off. To cheers or mortals celebrating her return. King of the Dead himself was making an unannounced visit, but even so, it was never him they were there for. He couldn’t imagine he was too greatly favoured outside the comfort of his own sturdily built walls. 

Stepping onto the platform, the world felt... different. Even from the perspective of Hades, a man who spent no more than a minute above his kingdom no more than twice a year, could sense the change. The sun was still reigning mercilessly in the sky, but it’s heat was not as burning as he recalled from before as it met his pale skin. Through the cracks of the solid ground beneath his boots sprouted all variety of flowers, saturated in colour and determined in their growth. Their colours were vibrant enough behind the guise of the king’s glasses for him to make note of them. He didn’t remember this. This station was something he had designed, was the only part of the mortal realm he ever saw since the tracks were laid, anything out of place would always stick out like a poet in hell. 

Walking the path to Demeter’s residence brought back memories Hades had long since suppressed. There had been a time in which Hades would walk straight from hell to collect Persephone and walk all the way back. Sometimes they’d meet halfway. Usually that was how it worked. Demeter liked to see as little of him as possible. He was a younger man then. Not young, but younger than he was now. She was a younger woman, too, and she was actually young. Times were easier. 

Every inch of the vast landscape that his eyes could see was bursting with life. More so than he ever remembered. The trees bore their fruits ripe and ready, flowers and grass swarming the fertile land. The sights were almost overwhelming to him, someone so out of touch with the natural world despite his marriage to the goddess of spring herself. He would admit, it was beautiful, despite how far it departed from what the god was accustomed to. 

He made note to himself as he approached the confines of Demeter’s gardens that her acres in particular were bursting with life. Of course, her land was always lush with flowers and fruits and the ridiculous amount of crops she’d gift to the mortals when she and her daughter had gotten their fill. He’d never understood why she grew so much. He didn’t question it. You’d rather avoid an argument with Demeter when you could. 

Her residence was as drastically different to his own kingdom as it was to Olympus, where both he and Demeter had been intending to stay before the kingdoms were allotted. She had left for different reasons, of course, specifically when she fell pregnant. Beyond that, her decisions were a mystery to Hades. Both he and his brother had expensive tastes - though Hades wasn’t as unbearably flashy with his wealth - but Demeter? She was a minimalist with everything besides plant life. Her home was just big enough to accommodate her and her daughter, who even well into adulthood had not moved out. What was the point? She was only there for since months (quite often less, but that didn’t cross his mind) a year, there was little point in taking the time to arrange a new half-year living space. That was assuming Demeter would allow it, of course, which was an assumption nobody could envision taking place. Climbing the walls were all breeds of vines, their leaves obscuring the windows as they rustled in the springtime breeze. He knew Persephone’s bedroom overlooked the front gardens - he’d never been inside, but she had pointed it out to him previously when he’d shown up to collect her - but the curtains of her window were drawn. Being utterly unable to see her didn’t help much, brother, not at all. 

Hades swallowed, persistently pushing down his nerves, and rapped his knuckles against the wooden door. It was answered nice and quickly. 

Demeter stood in the doorway. He didn’t know why he was surprised to see her, given that he had been expecting not to have his wife greet him. But it had been a long time. She’d aged. So had he. Time was kinder on her. More subtle. Just some lines on her face, some greys in her curls, the colours of her attire desaturating. She looked tired, too. Tired and concerned, and Hades’ fear silently elevated. The goddess sighed when she saw him, looking him up and down, and it seemed she was having the same thoughts. He’d changed. She knew only tales of her daughter’s husband, it’d had been a long time since she could put a face to the name. Demeter gathered herself, keeping composure, and beckoned Hades inside.

“C’mon,” the older woman motioned, making room for Hades to pass through the doorway. 

He glanced around when he walked in. Even in here, the botanical plague was present. Flowers were blooming through the walls, the floorboards. They were everywhere. Demeter noticed the fascination her son-in-law - something she’d never called him and never intended to, but it was a more technical description than “my daughter’s husband who I pretend doesn’t exist for half the year” - held for the delightful invasion when his eyes lingered on a group of carnations. Red. Not significant to her, in all likelihood, but they held a different meaning to him. 

“She done all this,” Demeter remarked, a hint of pride in her words. “World was the same when I had her. Goddess’a life makin’ life... right and natural, that.”

“Where is she?” were the first words out of Hades’ mouth. 

“Her room.”

“Is the-“

“Baby was born last night. Both of ‘em’s sleepin’ now, ain’t nobody had a minute’a sleep ‘til it was over.”

Hades’ heart dropped. On one hand, she was alive. Both of them were. That was good. Put some of his fears to rest, it did, made him see how he had overreacted to presumably natural parental fears. But on the other, he hadn’t been there. He’d wanted to be there. For his wife and for their child. Before he could say a word on the matter, Demeter was on the defensive. 

“I didn’t send for ya, I know, I’m sorry for that. Ain’t done it maliciously.”

“Sure ya didn’t. Ain’t like you’ve ever tried that before.” Hades snarled, but Demeter was unwavering. They’d had enough arguments over the distance kept from Persephone before, and she was unaffected by his argumentative tactics. 

“Now don’t you start that with me.” Demeter spoke sternly, shutting Hades up not with fear but with authority. She breathed in deeply, folding her arms against her chest and looking up at him. “I wanted to talk to you. Got a lot to say to you before you go in there.”

Oh. Well, alright then. Hades suppresses a roll of his eyes. Now? Really, now of all times, when she could have just shot him a letter or arranged a meeting when he didn’t have something as important as a newborn child to attend to? He kept his mouth shut, though, despite his gripes. Persephone wouldn’t want to wake up to her mama and her husband having a screaming match that she used to partake in. And if such a row flared up, Hades wouldn’t be the one to start it off. 

“I ain’t know what you and my baby promised to each other when she left but promises ain’t cuttin’ it this time.”

Hades nodded. He hated to agree with her, but she was right. Of course she was. 

“Girl spared me the details of what you two went through this winter past,” Demeter proceeded, “but storms ain’t lie. Worse than usual this year, it was.”

Hades’ jaw clenched, his eyes flitting away from the goddess. 

“You’ve hurt that girl. You know that, don’t ya?” she asked and raised an eyebrow. Hades didn’t answer, she continued. “That’s my baby. She’s all I got left, but she ain’t been my girl for a damn long time. Since you turned her to the drink she’d changed somethin’ awful. I been watchin’ her spiral into somethin’ I barely even recognise as my own blood and there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it.” 

Demeter’s words were growing frantic, her volume increasing as her anger shone through her well-formed guise. 

“You know what’s that done to me? Even if ya don’t care ‘bout that, you know what it’s done to her? Can’t go a night without emptyin’ a bottle or a tin’a morphine no more, you know that?”

Hades, now he wanted to say that yes, of course he knew that, he lived with Persephone too and he ain’t that damn ignorant, you know, before catching on to quite how incriminating that sounded. He’d known, but he hadn’t stopped. Had made some snide remarks here and there about how he thought she’d had enough, but never did more than that. Never addressed why it was she’d ran to those for the comfort her husband would fail to provide every time she needed him.

“You know how many times my daughter’s come cryin’ to me ‘bout what you did to her and your land you was supposed to share with her and all I could do was stand idly by and watch her suffer?”

“I-“

“Don’t. Let me finish.”

Demeter closed her eyes, giving herself a moment to gather her emotions. This had been a long time coming, they both knew it well.

“You’ve done something awful things to that woman, Hades,” she eventually spoke up again, “and I don’t want ‘em to happen any more. It ain’t just her you hurt. And I won’t try make ya care ‘bout me or the mortals, but it’s your baby she’s got and it’s not her job to raise it herself and let ya fuck everything up again.”

Hades nodded as he bit his tongue.

“I know.”

They stood a moment, not sure what to say, just staring at one another with neither knowing how to proceed. 

“I don’t want ya to leave her.”

Hades raised an eyebrow. 

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

“Good.”

Demeter paused, cautious with her words. 

“I’d be a liar if I said I ain’t never wanted it. But you...” the goddess shook her head, looking down at the floorboards beneath her before returning her gaze to Hades. “You used’ta make her happy. Happier than I’d ever seen her.” 

That was a hard admission for Mother Nature to give. The king opened his mouth to speak, but closed it just as quickly when his words faded in his mouth. 

“I don’t want her to end up like me. Lonely and mad with a baby to raise up all on my own, I don’t want that for her. I want the both of ya to make things work. I want to to see her happy again, happy the old way she used to be.”

Hades’ brow furrowed as Demeter’s voice came out strained, her eyes shining with forming tears. 

“I want my daughter back, Hades.”

The woman sighed, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose as she closed her eyes, a tear or two falling down her tanned cheeks. Her skin was darker than her daughter’s, her hair was too, but they had always held a striking resemblance. 

“Fates, look at me...” she muttered, shaking her head as she inhaled a sharp, deep breath. “Rubbed off on me with all her cryin’, she has.”

“I’m makin’ changes down below,” Hades spoke up properly at long last. “We... we had a talk, before she left. We ain’t gonna go down this road again,” he said in continuation, and he said those words like he meant them, like he believed them as much as he wished he did. 

“That’s good,” Demeter nodded, managing a smile through water eyes. “That’s good. Just... listen to her. She wants this to work just as much as you.”

Hades nodded. He want to move, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. In fact, they were. More plants had sprouted as the pair spoke, and several had coiled around his ankles.

“She’s waitin’ for ya,” Demeter remarked, watching with a slight chuckle as Hades grunted and shook his legs free. 

Hades, when finally freed, turned to walk down the short hallway to his wife’s bedroom. Demeter raised her hand. 

“Wait.”

Hades glanced back. There was more? He was on edge as it was, he didn’t need more of this to fuel his fear. 

“The baby...” she began, and Hades felt his breath catch with an undeniable fear.   
What was wrong? What happened? Why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t Hermes told him? Why hadn’t he-

“Is something wrong?” she asked, his deep voice wavering in a fashion he couldn’t hide. 

“No. Little one’s perfectly healthy, it’s just...” Demeter swallowed. “It’s a girl.”

A girl. He had a daughter. Hades let out a breath of delight, a smile taking hold of his face that was garishly unfamiliar against his harsh features. 

“And I know you were probably hopin’ for a son, so-“

“No.” Hades answered suddenly and shook his head. “No. A girl is... I ain’t had a preference, this is...”

Even Demeter couldn’t help but smile at the joy shining from the god’s face. This was a far stretch from the Hades she had fought a war beside, far from the Hades she had fought her own kind of war against, but that was a change she decided to welcome. He was at a loss for words, and she couldn’t despise that however much she wanted to. And brother, trust and believe that she, Demeter as she was, she had always, always wanted to. 

“Go on, then. Meet your baby.”

Hades didn’t need to be told twice. 

He quietly pushed open the door, trying not to wake his wife if she so happened to still be asleep. Instantly, he was hit with a floral scent, and he soon understood why. Her walls were scarcely visible behind them all. Scarcely discernible from the outdoors she favoured. Her bed was covered by the most. She was still sleeping there. Her hair was held up and out of her face by a silk headscarf, so Hades got a good look at her face. She looked peaceful. No tension there at all. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her so calm.

As he stepped forwards, his eyes caught a small bundle in her arms. Something wrapped in blankets that it didn’t take a genius to identify. The thought alone made him smile. He slid his long coat from his shoulders, handing it over her door, then sitting on the edge of her bed. Demeter stood a moment outside of her bedroom, intending to stay there and keep a watchful eagle eye on that man. But... no. She’d let him have this, she thought, watching the care he took just in her bedroom, she’d let him have this time with her daughter. With his wife. 

She was here, Hades thought to himself. This was real. 

In that instant, the sisters had been silenced, their voices muffled in his mind. They were far less of a priority. Persephone lay still, her chest rising and falling with deep breaths and her arms protectively cradling her bundle of blankets to her body. Hades took a moment to just watch her. Admire how calm she finally seemed after the six months of true torment she’d just crawled out of. He could have sat there for a real good while. But he was characteristically an impatient man at the best of times. His wife, she knew that better than anyone else. Carefully, he extended a pale hand, gently shaking her shoulder to try and wake her. Persephone groaned something, soft and tired, as she stirred before wearily opening her dark eyes. When they met her husband’s gaze, her lips slowly formed into a smile. 

“Hey,” she said, blinking sleepily, her voice raspier than usual after just waking up from what Hades presumed was a well needed sleep. 

“Hey,” he said back. They’d gotten bad at this, hadn’t they. 

“You look awful,” Persephone remarked with a smile. Hades chuckled, nodding in agreement. 

“Ain’t had much sleep since you left.”

“Feelin’s mutual. This one gave me some hell, she did,” the goddess replied, turning her attention to the bundle in her arms. She rocked it gently, and Hades held his breath for a reason he all too wasn’t sure of. “Hey baby... wake up, sweetheart, someone’s here to see ya...”

A small hand reached upwards, and Persephone held her finger out for it to grab on to. 

“There she is, there’s my little girl...” she cooed with a beaming smile. “Go on. Go meet your daddy.”

Persephone carefully repositioned her arms, holding the baby out to Hades. He gasped under his breath when he saw her, and Persephone’s smile became brighter than the sun shining through her curtains. Hades took the child carefully, and Persephone only needed to fuss a little bit over the positioning of his arms. 

“She’s beautiful...” was all he could manage at first.

“Ain’t she just?” Persephone agreed, admiring her little one in Hades’ arms. “She’s got good genes, that one.” 

The child had paler skin than her mother, though still golden as the metals in his mines. Her open eyes were dark, her hair was dark, and she was so, so tiny. Hades was smiling more than he ever had in the past century, maybe even longer, and his daughter smiled back. His daughter! His daughter, this girl was! Hades himself was at a loss for words, and Persephone, she watched as her husband was overcome with that new-fatherly joy her own father never seemed to feel for her, refusing to let her tiredness overcome her now. This was too special a moment for her to miss. 

“She’s ours...” Persephone reminded him, as if he needed it. 

“I...” Hades began, trailing away as he touched his daughter’s tiny face. “I can hardly believe she’s real.”

“Oh, I can,” Persephone retorted playfully. “Was hell gettin’ her outta me, I tell ya. Wasn’t a pretty sight in here, no sir.”

“How are you?” Hades asked, briefly turning away from his daughter. 

“Sore.” Persephone just shrugged, reaching up to free her hair from the scarf. “Sore and tired. Mama’s given me some medicine. First kinda drugs I’ve had since she came along.”

Hades must have appeared more concerned at that remark than he actually intended to, because his wife rolled her eyes in response. 

“Take a joke, lover, ain’t serious. Told ya I’m betterin’ myself now that we’ve got our little girl and I meant every word.”

“I know. I’m doin’ the same.”

Persephone reached out, pressing her hand against her husband’s sturdy arm. 

“C’mere,” she drawled, tugging the sleeve of his blazer. “Wanna be close to ya.”

Hades complied. He shifted closer to his wife, ever so careful with the child he held in his arms. He moved up next to her, his head rested against her headboard and hers against his shoulder. Persephone sighed happily, stroking her daughter’s still thin hair with one hand. The child smiled up at them, reaching one of her hands up and grabbing up at Hades. Persephone struggled to decide who to look at, her newborn daughter or her overjoyed husband, as her eyelids began to grow heavy again.

“Look at that, lover, she likes you,” the goddess muttered lovingly, nuzzling her check against her husband’s sturdy form. “Barely even known ya five minutes. Still got the charm, he does, my man.”

“I love her already.” Hades proclaimed softly, letting the little girl grab on to one of his larger fingers. 

“Our little goddess... hi there, baby girl...”

Persephone exhaled contentedly, laughing under her breath as she saw that new excitement dancing across her husband’s face. She hadn’t been this happy in... Fates, who knows how long it had been. Tell her this was how her daughter’s birth would have been even just a month ago, she would have thought you a lunatic. Well, she was happy to be proven wrong for once in her life. 

“You thought of any names?”

“Hm?” Persephone sat up slightly, exhaustion getting the better of her. “Oh, I’ve had a few in mind. Only thought of em when I got back up here, but... had Zagreus in mind for a boy, Melinoe for a girl. You think that suits her?”

“Melinoe...” Hades muttered, turning back down to face his daughter. “You like that name, little songbird?”

The baby giggled, kicking her little legs underneath the blanket wrapping her up. 

“Think that’s a yes,” her mother laughed breathily. “Baby Melinoe... now don’t you go changin’ it like you mama did when you’re a big girl, I’m givin’ you a nice name to start with!”

Hades chuckled, and Persephone felt a strange sort of relief hearing him like that again. It had been too long. 

“Mama says she’s like you.”

“That a good thing?”

“Says she’s stubborn,” she clarified. “Took her sweet time coming into the world she did. Guess she’s not like you in that respect, you can hardly wait to come up.”

Persephone was glad that she could make that joke. Glad that Hades didn’t take that as an insult. That was a good sign, she assumed, it must be.

“She looks like you. Beautiful girl.”

“Still got some’a you in her blood, you know,” Persephone reminded him. “She’s got your smile. You’d know it too if ya did it more.”

Hades examined his daughter’s face, who was still grinning a toothless smile as she toyed with her pale green swaddling.

“I’ll have more cause to smile from now on, lover.”

“Good. Always liked your smile.”

Persephone reached one of her slender hands up, combing her fingers through his bone white hair. She buried her face deeper against his shoulder, hungrily inhaling his earthy metallic scent. She’d missed this. Missed him.

“You’re stayin’ a while. Few days at least.” she informed him matter-of-factly through a yawn. “Hermes is gonna get your things. You ain’t leavin’ me stuck up here with this one for six months.”

“Ain’t a problem for me.”

“A single word outta ya about business and I’ll start another uprisin’, just you wait and see.”

The pair went silent, but this was a good silent. Persephone, upon deciding she wanted a little more than peaceful silence now, clumsily reached up to grasp her husband’s face and pull him into a kiss. It was nothing special, but it was what she needed. Hades melted against her touch, a power she’d always had with him One of her hands smoothed his hair, the other rested lightly against his jawline. They had a lot of catching up on affection to do. 

When the kiss was broken, Persephone and Hades stayed close. They kept their foreheads rested together, Persephone’s hands against her husband and Hades’ arms cradling their daughter. She smiled sweetly at him as she slowly opened her eyes, pressing a light little kiss to her lover’s cheek before moving back to laying her head on his shoulder. 

“Mama needs rest,” she stated, closing her eyes but keeping her head against Hades. Back when the world was young, he’d let her fall asleep like this in his lap while he worked through the night. That didn’t happen anymore. Well, maybe he was speaking too soon. It was hard to tell. 

“Hades..?” she murmured, on the verge of falling asleep. 

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end. Thank you all so much for reading! This has been my first multi-chapter project and it has received an overwhelming amount of support, so I cannot thank everybody who has stuck with me enough. It was a rough journey to get here, but our gods have some hope. Goodnight, brothers, goodnight.


End file.
